I 



^°°°^ 




I JCLYDeR y 

° 6 



w Y 



»2i 



LIBRARY OF CONGRESS. 



Slielf.LB-U^S 

A^jk- 

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 



4. 



THE DISTAFF SERIES 

Issued under the auspices of the Board of Women 

Managers of the State of New York for 

the Columbian Exposition 



THE DISTAFF SKRIKS. 

16mo, Cloth, Ornamental, $1 00 each. 



Woman- and the Highkb Education. Eilited by 

Anna C. Brackett. 
Thk Literature of Philanthropy. Edited by 

Frances A. Goodale. 
Kakly Prose and Verse. Edited by Alice Morse 

Earle and Emily Ellsworth Ford. 
Thh Kindergarten. Edited by Kate Doujrlas Wiggin. 
Hou.sKHOLD Art. Edited by Candace Wheeler. 
Short Stories. Edited by Constance Cary Harrison. 



PuBi.isHKD BY HARPER & BROTHERS, N. Y. 

t^" For sale bi/ all booksellers, or will be snit, postage 
prepaid, to any 'part of the United States, Canada, or 
Mexico, on receipt of the price. 



THE J\ 

KINDERGARTEN 



EDITED 



r 



KATE DOUGLAS WIGGIN 




NEW YORK ^^^^^J 



HARPER & BROTHERS PUBLISHERS 
MDCCCXCIII 



.W6 



Copyright, 1893, by Hakpek & Brothers. 



All riyAts reserved. 



NOTE. 

Mrs. Wiggin's paper " The Relation of the 
Kindergarten to Social Reform " appeared in her 
volume " Children's Rights," and is reprinted 
here by the courtesy of Messrs. Houghton, Mif- 
flin & Co. ; Miss Brooks's article " The Philoso- 
phy of the Kindergarten " is included by the 
permission of the Christian Union. 



CONTENTS. 



Page 
INTRODUCTION vii 

THE RELATION OF THE KINDERGARTEN TO 

SOCIAL REFORM 3 

By Kate Douglas Wiggin. 

THE CHILD AND THE RACE 30 

By Mrs. Mary H. Peabody. 

SEED, FLOWER, AND FRUIT OF THE KINDER- 
GARTEN 41 

By Alice Wellington Rollins. 

A PLEA FOR THE PURE KINDERGARTEN . . 74 
By Jenny B. Merrill. 

THE PHILOSOPHY OF THE KINDERGARTEN. . 97 
By Angelixe Brooks. 

AN EXPLANATION OF THE KINDERGARTEN, 

INTENDED FOR MOTHERS 133 

By Alice A. Chadwick. 

THE KINDERGARTEN IN THE MOTHER'S 
WORK 162 

By Mrs. Elizabeth Powell Bond. 

OUTGROWTHS OF KINDERGARTEN TRAINING . 180 
By Mrs. A. B. Longstreet. 



i 



INTEODUCTIOK 



The series of collections of which this volume 
is a part is made up of representative work of 
the women of the State of New Yorli in period- 
ical literature. 

This literature has been classified under its 
conspicuous divisions — Poetry, Fiction, History, 
Art, Biography, Translation, Literary Criticism, 
and the like. 

A woman of eminent success in each depart- 
ment has then been asked to make a collection 
of representative work in that department, to 
include in it an example of her own work, and 
to place her name upon the volume as its 
Editor. 

These selections have been made, as far as 
possible, chronologically, beginning with the 
earliest work of the century, in order that 
the volumes may carry out the plan of the 



" Exhibit of Women's Worii in Literature in 
the State of New Yorlv," of which tliey are 
an original part. 

The aim of this Exliibit was to make for the 
Cohmibian Exposition a record of literary work, 
limited, through necessity, both by sex and local- 
ity, but, as far as possible, accurate and com- 
plete, and to preserve this record in the State 
Library in the Capitol at Albany. 

It includes twenty-five hundred books, begin- 
ning with the works of Charlotte Ramsay Lennox, 
the first-born female author of the province of 
New York, published in London in 1752, closing 
with the pages of a translation of Herder, still 
wet from the press, and comprising the works of 
almost every author in the intervening one hun- 
dred and forty years. 

It includes also three hundred papers read be- 
fore the literary clubs of the State, a summary 
of the work of all writers for the press, and the 
folios which preserve the work of many able 
women who have not published books. 

The women of the State of New York have 
had the honor of decorating and furnishing the 
Library of the Woman's Building. Believing 



the best equipment of a library to be literature, 
they have therefore prepared this Exhibit, and 
have made its character comprehensive and his- 
toric, in order that it may not be temporary, but 
that it may be preserved in the State Library 
and may have permanent value for future lovers 
and students of Americana, 

In the preparation of these volumes Messrs. 
Harper & Brothers have arranged that the com- 
position and other mechanical work, as well as 
the designing of the cover, should be done by 
women, thus giving especial significance to the 
title, "The Distaff Series." 

Blanche Wilder Bellamy, 
Chairman of the Committee on Literature 
of the Board of Women 3fanagers of the 
State of New York. 



THE KIKDERGAETEK 



"The ordinary child remembers to be good; the kin- 
dergarten child forgets to be naughty." 

—Alice W. Rollins. 



J 



THE RELATION OF THE KINDER- 
GARTEN TO SOCIAL REFORM. 

BY KATE DOUGLAS WIGGIX. 

" Social reform !" It is always rather an 
awe-striking plirase. It seems as if oue 
ought to be a philosopher eveu to approach 
so august a subject. The kindergarten — a 
simple uupreteutious place, where a lot of 
tiny children work and play together; a 
place into which if the hard-headed man 
of business chanced to glance, and if he did 
not stay long enough, or come often enough, 
would conclude that the children were 
frittering away their time, particularly if 
that same good man of business had 
weighed and measured and calculated so 
long that he had lost the seeing eye and 
understanding heart. 

Some years ago a San Francisco kiuder- 
gartner was threading her way througli a 
dirty alley, making friendly visits to the 
children of her fiock. As she lingered on a 



certaia door-step, receiviug the last confi- 
dences of some "weary woman's heart, she 
heard a loud but not unfriendly voice ring- 
ing from an upper window of a tenement- 
house just round the corner, ^' Clear things 
from underfoot !" pealed the voice, in sten- 
torian accents. '' The teacher o' the Kids^ 
Guards is comin' down the street !" 

"Eureka!" thought the teacher, with a 
smile. " There's a bit of sympathetic trans- 
lation for you ! At last the German word 
has been put into the vernacular. The odd 
foreign syllables have been taken to the 
ignorant mother by the lisping child, and 
the Mndergartners have become the Eids' 
Guards ! Heaven bless the rough transla- 
tion, colloquial as it is !" 

What has the kindergarten to do with 
social reform ? What bearing have its theory 
and practice upon the conduct of life ? 

A brass-buttoned guardian of the peace 
remarked to a gentleman on a street-corner, 
"If \ve could open more kindergartens, sir, 
we could almost shut up the penitentiaries, 
sir!" We heard the sentiment, applauded 
it, and promptly printed it on the cover of 
three thousand reports ; but on calm reflec- 
tion it appears like an exaggerated state- 
ment. I am not sure that a kindergarten in 



every ward of every city in America " would 
almost shut up the peuiteutiaries, sir !" The 
most determined optimist is weighed down 
by the feeling that it will take more than 
the ardent prosecution of any one reform, 
however vital, to produce such a result. We 
appoint investigating committees, who ask 
more and more questions, compile more and 
more statistics, and get more and more con- 
fused every year. "Are our criminals na- 
tive or foreign-horn ?" that we may know 
whether we are worse or better than other 
people ? " Have they ever learned a trade ?" 
that we may prove what we already know, 
that idle fingers are the devil's tools ; " Have 
they been educated f — by any one of the 
sorry methods that take shelter under that 
much-abused word — that we may know 
whether ignorance is a bliss or a blister ; 
" Are they married or single ?" that we may 
determine the influence of home ties ; " Have 
they been given to the use of liquor ?" that 
we may heap proof on proof, mountain-high, 
against the monster evil of intemperance ; 
'' What has been their family history ?" 
that we may know how heavily the law of 
heredity has laid its burdens upon them. 
Burning questions all, if we could find out 
the causes of crime. . 



To discover the "why and wherefore of 
thiugs is a law of huraau thought. The re- 
form schools, penitentiaries, prisons, insane 
asylums, hospitals, and poor-houses are all 
filled to overflowing ; and it is entirely sen- 
sible to inquire how the people came there, 
and to relieve, pardon, bless, cure, or reform 
them as far as we can . Meanwhile, as we 
are dismissing or blessing or burying the un- 
fortunates from the imposing front gates of 
our institutions, new throngs are crowding 
in at the little back doors. Life is a bridge, 
full of gaping holes, over which we must 
all travel ! A thousand evils of human 
misery and wickedness flow in a dark cur- 
rent beneath ; and the blind, the weak, the 
stupid, and the reckless are continually fall- 
ing through into the rushing flood. We 
must, it is true, organize our life-boats. It 
is our duty to pluck out the drowning 
wretches, receive their vows of penitence 
and gratitude, and pray for courage and res- 
ignation when they celebrate their rescue by 
falling in again. But we agree nowadays 
that we should do tliem much better service 
if we could contrive to mend more of the 
holes in the bridge. 

The kindergarten is trying to mend one 
of these "holes." It is a tiny one, only 



large enough for a cliild's foot ; but that is 
our bit of the workl's work — to keej) it 
small! If we can prevent the little people 
from stumbling, we may hope that the grown 
folks will have a surer foot and a steadier 
gait. 

A wealthy lady announced her intention 
of giving $25,000 to some home for incu- 
rables. " Why," cried a bright kindergart- 
ner, "don't you give twelve and a half 
thousand to some home for curahles, and 
then your other twelve and a half will go so 
much further ?" 

In a word, solicitude for childhood is one 
of the signs of a growing civilization. " To 
cure, is the voice of the past ; to prevent, 
the divine whisper of to-daj^" 

What is the true relation of the kinder- 
garten to social reform ? Evidently, it can 
have no other relation than that which grows 
out of its existence as a plan of education. 
Education, we have all glibly agreed, lessens 
the prevalence of crime. That sounds very 
well ; but, as a matter of fact, has our past 
system produced all the results in this direc- 
tion that we have hoped and prayed for? 
The truth is, people will not be made much 
better by education until the plan of educat- 
ing them is made better to begin with. 



Froebel's idea — the kindergarten idea — 
of the child and its powers, of humanity 
and its destiny, of the universe, of the whole 
problem of living, is somewhat different 
from that held by the vast majority of par- 
ents and teachers. It is imperfectly carried 
out, even in the kindergarten itself, where a 
conscious effort is made, and is infrequently 
attempted in the school or family. 

His plan of education covers the entire 
period between the nursery and the univer- 
sity, and contains certain essential features 
which bear close relation to the gravest 
problems of the daj'. If they could be 
made an integral part of all our teaching in 
families, schools, and institutions, the bur- 
dens under which society is groaning to-day 
would fall more and more lightly on each 
succeeding generation. These essential feat- 
ures have often been enumerated. I am no 
fortunate herald of new truth. I may not 
even put the old wine in new bottles ; but 
iteration is next to inspiration, and I shall 
give you the result of eleven years' experi- 
ence among the children and homes of the 
poorer classes. This experience has not been 
confined to teaching. One does not live 
among these people day after day, pleading 
for a welcome for unwished-for babies, stand- 



ing beside tiny graves, receiving pathetic 
coufideDces from wretched fathers and help- 
less mothers, witliout facing ever}^ problem 
of this workaday world ; they cannot all be 
solved, even by the wisest of ns ; we can 
only seize the end of the skein nearest to our 
hand, and patiently endeavor to straighten 
the tangled threads. 

The kindergarten starts out plainly with 
the assumption that the moral aim in educa- 
tion is the absolute one, and that all others 
are purely relative. It endeavors to be a 
life-school, where all the practices of com- 
plete living are made a matter of daily 
habit. It asserts boldly that doing right 
would not be such an enormously difScult 
matter if we practised it a little — say a 
tenth as much as we practise the piano — 
and it intends to give children plenty of op- 
portunity for practice in this direction. It 
says insistently and eternally, "Do noble 
things, not dream them all day long." For 
development, action is the indispensable req- 
uisite. To develop moral feeling and the 
power and habit of moral doing we must 
exercise them, excite, encourage, and guide 
their action. To check, reprove, and punish 
wrong feeling and doing, however necessarj'^ 
it be for the safety and harmony, nay, for 



the very existence of any social state, does 
not develop right feeliug and good doiug. 
It does not develop anything, for it stops 
action, and without action there is no de- 
velopment. At best it stops wrong devel- 
opment, that is all. 

In the kindergarten, the physical, mental, 
and spiritual heiug is consciously addressed 
at one and the same time. There is no 
" jiiece-work " tolerated. The child is viewed 
in his threefold rehitious, as the child of 
Nature, the child of Man, and the child of 
God ; there is to be no disregarding any one 
of these divinely apj)ointed rehitions. It 
endeavors with equal solicitude to instil 
correct and logical habits of thought, true 
and generous habits of feeling, and pure and 
lofty habits of action ; and it asserts se- 
renely that, if information cannot be gained 
in the right way, it would better not be 
gained at all. It has no special hobby, un- 
less you would call its eternal plea for the 
all-sided development of the child a hobby. 

Somebody said lately that the kindergar- 
ten people had a certain stock of metaphysi- 
cal statements to be aired on every occasion, 
iind that they were over -fond of prating 
about the "being" of the child. It would 
hardly seem as if too much could be said iu 



favor of the symmetrical growth of the 
child's nature. These are not mere "silken 
phrases ;'' but, if any one dislikes them, let 
him take the good, honest, ringing charge of 
Colonel Parker, " Remember that the whole 
boy goes to school !" 

The whole boy goes to school ; but the 
whole boy is seldom educated after he gets 
there. A fraction of him is attended to in 
the evening, however, and a fraction on 
Sunday. He takes Jiimself in hand on Sat- 
urdays and in vacation time, and accom- 
plishes a good deal, notwithstanding the 
fact that his sight is a trifle impaired al- 
ready, and his hearing grown a little dull, 
so that Dame Nature works at a disadvan- 
tage, and begins, doubtless, to dread boys 
who have enjoyed too much "schooling," 
since it seems to leave them in a state of 
coma. 

Our general scheme of education fui'thers 
mental development with considerable suc- 
cess. The training of the hand is now be- 
ing laboriously woven into it ; but, even, 
when that is accomplished, we shall still be 
working with imperfect aims, for the stress 
laid upon heart-culture is as yet in no way 
commensurate with its gravity. We know, 
with that indolent, fruitless half-knowledge 



that passes for knowing, that "ont of the 
heart are the issnes of life." We feel, not 
with the white heat of absolute conviction, 
but placidly and indifferently, as becomes 
the dwellers in a world of change, that 
"conduct is three-fourths of life;" but we 
do not crystallize this belief into action. 
We " dream," not " do " the " noble things." 
The kindergarten does uot fence off a half- 
hour each day for moral culture, biit keeps 
it in view every moment of every day. Yet 
it is never obtrusive ; for the mental facul- 
ties are being addressed at the same time, 
and the body strengthened for its special 
work. 

With the methods generally practised in 
the family and school, I fail to see how we 
can expect any more delicate sense of right 
and wrong, any clearer realization of duty, 
any greater enlightenment of conscience, any 
higher conception of truth, than we now 
find in the world. If you are a fair-minded 
man or woman, and have had much experi- 
ence with young children, you will be com- 
pelled to confess that they generally have a 
tolerably clear sense of right and wrong, 
needing only gentle guidance to choose the 
right when it is put before them. I say 
most, not all, children ; for some are poor, 



blurred humau scrawls, blotted all over 
"with the mistakes of other people. And 
how do we treat this natural sense of what 
is true and good, this willingness to choose 
good rather than evil, if it is made even the 
least bit comprehensible and attractive? 
In various ways, all equally dull, blind, and 
vicious. If we look at the downright ethi- 
cal significance of the methods of training 
and discipline in many families and schools, 
Tve see that they are positively degrading. 
We appoint more and more "monitors" in- 
stead of training the "inward monitor" in 
each child, make truth- telling difficult in- 
stead of easy, punish trivial and grave of- 
fences about in the same way, practise open 
bribery by promising children a few cents a 
day to behave themselves, and weaken their 
sense of right by giving them picture-cards 
for telling the truth and credits for doing 
the most obvious duty. This has been car- 
ried on until we are on the point of need- 
ing another Deluge and a new start. 

Is it strange that we find the moral sense 
blunted, the conscience unenlightened? The 
moral climate with which we surround the 
child is so hazy that the spiritual vision 
grows dimmer and dimmer, and small won- 
der! Upon this solid mass of ignorance 



and stupidity it is difficult to make any im- 
pression ; yet I suppose there is greater joy 
in heaven over a cordial "thwack" at it 
than over most blows at existing evils. 

The kindergarten attempts a rational, re- 
spectful treatment of children, leading them 
to do right as much as possible for right's 
sake, abjuring all rewards save the pleasure 
of working for others and the delight that 
follows a good action, and all punishments 
save those that follow as natural penalties 
of broken laws — the obvious conseqnences 
of the special bit of wrong-doing, whatever 
it may be. The child's will is addressed in 
such a way as to draw it on, if right ; to 
turn it willingly, if wrong. Coercion in the 
sense of fear, personal magnetism, nay, even 
the child's love for the teacher, may be used 
in such a way as to weaken his moral force. 
With every free, conscious choice of right, a 
human being's moral power and strength of 
character increase ; and the converse of this 
is equally true. 

If the child is unruly in play, he leaves 
the circle and sits or stands by himself, a 
miserable, lonely unit, until he feels again in 
sympathy with the community. If he de- 
stroys his work, he unites the tattered frag- 
ments as best he may, and takes the moral 



object lesson home witli him. If he bas neg- 
lected his own work, he is not given the 
joy of working for others. If he does not 
work in harmony with his companions, a 
time is chosen when he will feel the sense 
of isolation that comes from not living in 
nnity with the prevailing spirit of good-will. 
He can have as much liberty as is consis- 
tent with the liberty of other people, but no 
more. If we could infuse the sjj'irit of this 
kind of discipline into family and school 
life, making it systematic and continuous 
from the earliest years, there would be few- 
er morally " slack-twisted " little creatures 
growing up into inefficient, bloodless man- 
hood and womanhood. It would be a good 
deal of trouble ; but then, life is a good deal 
of trouble anyway, if you come to that. We 
cannot expect to swallow the universe like 
a pill, and travel on through the world 
'' like smiling images pushed from behind." 
Blind obedience to authorit}^ is not in it- 
self moral. It is necessary as a part of gov- 
ernment. It is necessary in order that we 
may save children dangers of which they 
know nothing. It is valuable also as a 
habit. But I should never try to teach it 
by the story of that inspired idiot, the boy 
who '' stood on the burning deck, whence all 



16 



but him Lad fleet," and from wlieuce Lo 
would have fled, if his mental endowment 
had been that of ordiuaiy boys. For obedi- 
ence must not be allowed to destroy com- 
mon- sense and the feeling of personal re- 
sponsibility for oue's own actions. Our task 
is to train responsible, self-directing agents, 
not to make soldiers. 

Virtue thrives in a bracing moral atmos- 
phere, where good actions are taken rather 
as a matter of course. The attempt to in- 
stil an idea of self-government into the tiny 
slips of humanity that find their way into 
the kindergarten is useful, and infinitely to 
be preferred to the most implicit obedience 
to arbitrary command. In the one case, we 
may hope to have, some time or other, an 
enlightened will and conscience struggling 
after the right, failing often, but rising su- 
perior to failure, because of an ever stronger 
joy in right and shame for wrong. In tlie 
other, we have a " good goose,^^ who does the 
right for the picture-card that is set before 
him — a "trained dog" sort of child, who 
will not leap through the hoop unless he 
sees the whip or the lump of sugar. So 
much for the training of the sense of riglit 
and wrong. Now for the ]ii'ovision which 
the kindergarten makes for the growth of 



certain practical virtues, much needed in 
the world, but touched upon all too lightly 
in family and school. The student of polit- 
ical economy sees clearly enough the need 
of greater thrift and frugality in the nation ; 
but where and when do we propose to de- 
velop these virtues ? Precious little time is 
given to them in most schools, for their cul- 
tivation does not yet seem to be insisted 
upon as an integral part of the scheme. 
Here and there an inspired human being 
seizes on the thought that the child should 
really be taught how to live at some time 
between the ages of six and sixteen, or he 
may not learn so easily afterwards. Ac- 
cordingly, the pupils under the guidance 
of that particular person catch a glimpse 
of eternal verities between the printed 
lines of their geographies and grammars. 
The kindergarten makes the growth of 
every -day virtues so simple, so gradual, 
even so easy, that you are almost beguiled 
into thinking them commonplace. They 
seem to come in, just by-the-way, as it were, 
so that at the end of the day you have seen 
thought and word and deed so sweetly min- 
gled that you marvel at the "universal 
dovetailedness of things," as Dickens puts 
it. They will flourish better in the school, 



too, when the cheerful hum of labor is heard 
there for a little while each day. Tlie kiu- 
dergarten child has "just euongh" strips 
for his weaviug mat — noue to lose, none to 
destroy; just enough blocks in each of his 
boxes, and every one of them, he finds, is 
required to build each simple form. He cuts 
his square of paper into a dozen crystal- 
shaped bits, and behold ! each one of these 
tiuy liakes is needed to make a symmetrical 
figure. He has been careless in following 
directions, and his form of folded paper 
does not "come out" right. It is not even, 
and it is not beautiful. The false step in 
the beginning has perpetuated itself in each 
succeeding one, until at the end either j)ar- 
tial success or complete failure meets his 
eye. How easy here to see the relation of 
cause to effect ! " Courage ! " says the kin- 
dergartner ; " better fortune next time, for 
we will take greater pains." " Can you rub 
out the ugly, wrong creases?" ''We will 
try. Alas, no ! Wrong things are not so 
easily rubbed out, are they ?" " Use your 
worsted quite to the end, dear; it costs 
money." "Let us save all the crumbs from 
our lunch for the birds, children ; do not 
drop any on the floor ; it will only make 
work for somebody else." And so on, to 



19 



tbe eud of the busy, bappy day. How easy 
it is in the kindergarten, how seemingly dif- 
ficult later on ! 

The most superficial observer values the 
industrial side of the kindergarten, because 
it falls directly in line with the present ef- 
fort to make some manual training a part of 
school work ; but twenty or tweuty-five years 
iigo, when the subject was not so popular, 
kindergarten children were working away at 
their pretty, useful tasks — tiny missiona- 
ries helping to show the way to a truth now 
fully recognized. As to the value of lead- 
ing children to habits of industry as early 
in life as may be, that they may see the dig- 
nity and nobleness of labor, and conceive of 
their individual responsibilities in this world 
of action, that is too obvious to dwell upon 
at this time. 

To Froebel, life, action, and knowledge 
were the three notes of one harmonious 
chord ; but he did not advocate manual 
training merelj" that children might be kept 
busy, nor even that technical skill might be 
acquired. The piece of finished kinder- 
garten work is only a symbol of something 
more valuable which the child has acquired 
in doing it. It is always the creative in- 
stinct that is to be reached and vivified; 



everything else is secondary. By repro- 
duction from memory of a dictated form, 
by taking from or adding to it, by changing 
its centre,corners, or sides — by a dozen ingen- 
ious preliminary steps — the cliild's inventive 
faculty is developed ; and he soon reaches a 
point in drawing, building, modelling, or 
what not, where his greatest delight is to 
put his individual ideas into visible shape. 
Instead of tw^enty hackneyed and slavish cop- 
ies of one pattern, we have twenty free, indi- 
vidual productions, each the expression of 
the child's inmost personal thought. This 
invests labor with a beauty and powder, and 
confers upon it a dignity to be gained in no 
other way. It makes every task, however 
lowly, a joy, because all the higher faculties 
are brought into action. Much so-called 
" busy work," where pupils of the " A class" 
are allowed to stick a thousand pegs in a 
thousand holes while the "B class" is re- 
citing arithmetic, is quite fruitless, because 
it has so little thought behind it. 

Unless we have a care, manual training, 
when we have succeeded in getting it into 
the school, may become as mechanical and 
unprofitable as much of our mind training 
has been, and its moral value thus largely 
missed. The only way to prevent it is to 



borrow a snggestiou from Froebel. Then, 
and only then, shall we have insight with 
power of action, knowledge Avith practice, 
practice witli the stamp of individuality. 

The kindergarten succeeds in getting 
these interesting and valuable free produc- 
tions from children of four or five years 
only by developing, in every possible way, 
the sense of beauty and harmony and order. 
We know that people assume, somewhat at 
least, the color of their surroundings ; and, 
if the sense of beauty is to grow, we must 
give it something to feed upon. 

The kindergarten tries to provide a room, 
more or less attractive, quantities of pict- 
ures and objects of interest, growing plants 
and vines, vases of flowers, and plenty of 
light, air, and sunshine. A canary chirps 
in one corner, perhaps ; and very likely 
there will be a cat curled up somewhere, or 
a forlorn dog which has followed the chil- 
dren into this safe shelter. It is a pretty, 
pleasant, domestic interior, charming and 
grateful to the senses. The kindergartner 
looks as if she were glad to be there, and 
the children are generally smiling. The 
work, lying cosily about, is neat, artistic, 
and suggestive. The children pass out of 
their seats tu the cheerful sound of music, 



and are presently joiuing in an ideal sort of 
game, Avliere, in place of the mawkish sen- 
timentality of " Sally Walker," of obnox- 
ious memory, we see all sorts of healthfnl, 
poetic, childlike fancies woven into song. 
Eudeness is, for the most part, banished. 
The little human butterflies and bees and 
birds flit hither and thither in the circle; 
the make-believe trees hold up their branches 
and the flowers their cups; and every- 
body seems merry and content. As they 
pass out the door, good-byes and bows and 
kisses are wafted backward into the room ; 
for the manners of polite society are ob- 
served in everything. 

You draw a deep breath. This is a real 
kindergarten, and it is like a little piece of 
the millennium. "Everything is so very 
pretty and charming," says the visitor. Yes, 
so it is. But all this color, beauty, grace, 
symmetry, daintiness, delicacy, and refine- 
ment, though it seems to address and de- 
velop the aesthetic side of the child's nature, 
has in reality a very profound ethical signifi- 
cance. We have all seen the preternatural 
virtue of the child who wears her best dress, 
hat, and shoes on the same august occasion. 
Children are tidier and more careful in a 
dainty, well-kept room. They treat pretty 



materials more respectfully than ugly ones. 
They are inclined to be ashamed, at least in 
a slight degree, of uncleanliness, vulgarity, 
and brutality, when they see them in broad 
contrast with beauty and harmony and 
order. For the most part, they try " to live 
up to " the place in which they find them- 
selves. There is some connection between 
manners and morals. It is very elusive and 
perhaps not verj^ deep ; but it exists. Vice 
does not flourish alike in all conditions and 
localities, by any means. An ignorant negro 
was overheard praying, " Let me so lib dat 
when I die I may hah manners, dat I may 
know what to say when I see my heabenly 
Lord!" Well, I dare say we shall need 
good manners as well as good morals in 
heaven ; and the constant cultivation of the 
one from right motives might give us an un- 
expected impetus towards the other. If the 
systematic development of the sense of beauty 
aiid order has an ethical significance, so has 
the happy atmo8i)here of the kindergarten 
an influence in the same direction. 

I have known one or two ''solid men" 
and oue or two predestinate spinsters who 
said that they didn't believe children could 
accomplish anything in the kindergarten, 
because they had too good a time. There is 



sometLiug nuiqnely vicious about people who 
care nothing for children's happiness. That 
sense of the solemnity of mortal conditions 
Avhicli has been indelibly impressed upon us 
by our Puritan ancestors comes soon enough, 
Heaven knows ! Meanwhile, a happj'^ child- 
hood is an unspeakably precious memory. 

The social phase of the kindergarten is 
most interesting to the student of social 
economics. Co-operative w^ork is strongly 
emphasized; and the child is iuspired both 
to live his own full life, and jet to feel that 
his life touches other lives at every point — 
*'for we are members one of another." It 
is not the unity of the '' little birds " in the 
couplet who '' agree " in their '' little nests," 
because " they'd fall out if they didn't/' 
but a realizatiou, in embryo, of the divine 
principle that no man liveth to himself. 

As to specifically religious culture, every- 
thiug fosters the spirit out of which true 
religion grows. 

In the morniug talks, when the children 
are most susceptible and ready to " be 
good," as they say, their thoughts are led 
to the beauty of the world about them, the 
pleasure of right -doing, the sweetness of 
kind thoughts aud actions, the loveliness of 
truth, patience, and helpfulness, aud the 



goodness of the Creator to all created 
tbiugs. No parent, of whatever creed or 
lack of creed, whether a bigot or unbeliever, 
could object to the kind of religious instruc- 
tion given in the kindergarten ; aud yet in 
every x)ossible way the child-soul aud the 
child-heart are directed towards everything 
that is j)ure and holy, true aud steadfast. 

There is a vast deal of practical religion 
to he breathed into these little children of 
the street before the abstractions of beliefs 
can be comprehended. They canuot live on 
words and prayers and texts ; the thought 
and feeling must come hefore the expres- 
sion. As Mrs. Whitney says, " The world 
is determined to vaccinate chiklren with 
religion for fear they should take it in the 
natural way." 

Some wise sayings of the good Dr. Hol- 
land, in Xicholas Mintunif come to me as 
I write. Nicholas says, in discussing this 
matter of charities, and the various means 
of effecting a radical cure of pauperism, 
rather than its continual alleviation : '^ If 
you read the parable of the Sower, I think 
that you will find that soil is quite as nec- 
essary as seed — indeed, that the seed is 
tbrown away unless a soil is prepared in ad- 
vance, ... I believe in religion, but before 



26 



I undertake to i)lant it, I would like some- 
thing to plant it in. The sowers are too 
few, and the seed is too precious to be 
thrown away and lost among the thorns 
and stones." 

Last but by no means least, the admira- 
ble physical culture that goes on in the kin- 
dergarten is all in the right direction. Phy- 
siologists know as much about morality as 
ministers of the gospel. The vices which 
drag men and women into crime spring as 
often from unhealthy bodies as from weak 
wills and callous consciences. Vile fancies 
and sensual appetites grow stronger and 
more terrible when a feeble physique and 
low vitality offer no opposing force. Deadly 
vices are nourished in the weak, diseased 
bodies that are penned, day after day, in 
filthy, crowded tenements of great cities. 
If we could withdraw every three-year-old 
child from these physically enfeebling and 
morally brutalizing influences, and give 
him three or four hours a day of sunshine, 
fresh air, and healthy physical exercise, we 
should be doing humanity an inestimable 
service, even if we attempted nothing more. 

I have tried, as briefly as I might in 
justice to the subject, to emphasize the fol- 
lowing points : 



27 



I. That we must act np to onr coiiyic- 
tioiis with regard to the value of preveutive 
work. If we are ever obliged to choose, let 
ns save the children. 

II. That the relation of the kindergarten 
to social reform is simply that, as a plan of 
education, it offers us valuable suggestions 
in regard to the mental, moral, and phj^sical 
culture of children, which, in view of certain 
crying evils of the day, we should do well to 
foHow. 

The essential features of the kindergarten 
which bear a special relation to the subject 
are as follows : 

1. The symmetrical development of the 
child's powers, considering liim neither as 
all mind, all soul, nor all body ; but as a 
creature capable of devout feeling, clear 
thinking, noble doing. 

2. The attempt to make so-called "moral 
culture" a little less immoral; the rational 
method of discipline, looking to the growth 
of moral, self-directing power in the child 
— the only proper discipline for future citi- 
zens of a free republic. 

3. The development of certain iiractical 
virtues, the lack of which is endangering 
the prosperity of the nation ; namely, econ- 
omy, thrift, temperance, self-reliance, fru- 



gality, iudustry, courtesy, and all the sober 
Lost — none of them drawing-room accom- 
pllsliments, and consequently in small de- 
mand. 

4. The emphasis placed upon manual 
training, especially in its development of the 
child's creative activity. 

5. The training of the sense of beauty, 
harmony, and order; its ethical as well as 
eesthetical significance. 

6. The insistence upon the moral etfect 
of happiness ; joy the favorable climate of 
childhood. 

7. The training of the child's social nat- 
ure; an attempt to teach the brotherhood 
of man as well as the Fatherhood of God. 

8. The realization that a healthy body 
has almost as great an influence on morals 
as a pure mind. 

I do not say that the consistent practice 
of these principles will bring the millen- 
nium in the twinkling of an eye, but I do 
affirm that they are the thought-germs of 
that better education which shall prepare 
humanity for the new earth over which shall 
arch the new heaven. 

Ruskin says, "Crime can only be truly 
liindered by letting uo man grow up a crim- 
inal, by taking away the will to commit 



29 



sin ! " But, you object, that is sheer impos- 
sibility. It does seem so, I confess, and yet, 
unless you are willing to think that the 
Avhole plan of au Omnipotent Being is to be 
utterly overthrown, set aside, thwarted, then 
you must believe this ideal possible, some- 
how, some time. 

I know of no better way to grow to- 
wards it than by living up to the kinder- 
garten idea, that just as we gain intellectual 
power by doing intellectual work, and the 
finest cesthetic feeling by creating beauty, so 
shall we win for ourselves the power of 
feeling nobly and willing nobly by doing 
"noble things."^ 



THE CHILD AND THE RACE. 

BY MRS. MARY H. PEABODY. 

We ofteu hear the expression, "The child 
repeats the history of the race." The words 
are used from the psychological point of 
view rather than in the historic sense. They 
are quoted to show that the single human 
being goes through a certain process of de- 
velopment that in some way runs parallel to 
the general progress of humanity as it has 
grown from early ages up to its present con- 
ditions, and that a study of that similarity 
in the courses of life is of use in directing 
the education of children. 

The principle is of course applicable ev- 
erywhere, but in the kindergarten there is 
an especial ground for referring to it, be- 
cause in the treatment that is there given 
to the young mind this method of growth, 
which is native to humanity, is met by a 
more immediate and complete response than 
is given by other systems of teaching. To 



31 



see with what right we may make that 
claim we need to look iuto histor3\ The 
progress of the race has been the progress 
and unfolding of mind. It has been by the 
growth of thought that man has passed from 
his days of simplest existence to these of 
extended power; and recognizing this, men 
have hastened to establish schools to teach 
young minds how to think. The alphabets 
of music, language, logic, and rhetoric were 
once the chosen way, with efforts at natural 
science, mathematics, and such curious ideas 
of astronomy, physics, and geography as 
masters ventured to assume were true. As 
time passed and men beheld the face of Nat- 
ure more clearly, they found that all think- 
ing on the part of humanity had to try it- 
self in her domain, and that only what could 
hold true under her sky, wherever tried, was 
of any real value. Nature has been the 
great teacher of the world, and the question 
has been and still is how to bring her into 
the schools of men. 

In the light of history action is the result 
of thought. Jt is carrying out on the plane 
of Nature, by means of her materials and 
her forces, the ideas which have germinated 
in the mind of man. Thus the great task 
of mankind has been to make his owu 



32 



thought clear as to the possibilities of Nat- 
ure; to comprehend in his own mind her 
laws of action, the relationship and meth- 
ods of her forces, the agreement and disa- 
greement of her materials, and to know by 
means of Nature's refusals and compliances 
in what way, working with her, he might 
carry out his own conceptions. The diffi- 
culty has never been that nature is one 
thing and man another, but that man has 
neither known himself, his own powers and 
the laws that control them, nor the similar 
action of things outside of himself in nature ; 
and truly the sum of his history has been the 
establishing of one point after another in 
this great connection of the world within 
and the world without, and so offering to 
humanity at large one step after another by 
which to ascend towards its height of mor- 
tal power. 

The spirit of man, being immortal and be- 
longing to the Infinite, flies through space 
to limitless regions beyond. For discipline, 
for knowledge of itself, for the training that 
is essential to its healthy growth in this be- 
ginning of its career, it is cast in earthly 
form and set face to face with nature that 
it may develop thought — the clear, strong, 
thinking, reasoning mind. This is the phi- 



losopby of Frocbel. He sees the new-born 
human spirit as the first degree of life. He 
sees the physical nature as its "outermost" 
— the degree outside and opposite, and he 
sees the man himself rising between the two 
npou the plane of that third condition or de- 
gree of life, the thoughtful, rational mind. 
This mind of man is created and grows by 
the union of the volatile interior spirit with 
the limited forms and forces of nature with- 
out ; and Froebel shows that since the his- 
tory of the race reveals all this, we can take 
advantage of its teachings, and in educating 
the child give him from the beginning a 
certain acquaintance with nature that shall 
be a true foundation for his growth of mind 
and offer the greatest service for his rapid 
adv^ancement. In the teaching of Froebel 
we find no point in life unrecognized. His 
vision was keen in all directions, and as if 
standing himself at the centre, he looks 
through the entire circumference of life, 
considering the past, the present, and the 
future, relating the child to his felloWvS as a 
man, and taking into his plan for education 
all that man has done in his range of labor 
from lowest forms of industry to highest 
forms of art. The kindergarten is not, how- 
ever, a museum. It does not bring into its 



borders materials for illustration of tbc di- 
versity of tlie world, either as shown iu nat- 
ure or in the works of man. On the contra- 
ry, Froebel teaches explicitly that the visible 
world of form and movement — its rolliug 
spheres, its rocks and earth, its forms of 
life, plant, animal, and human, and amid 
all this the manifold labors and construc- 
tions of men — that this great outside world 
is not to be brought to the child. He sees 
these things everywhere about him. They 
are in themselves variety, their name is dis- 
traction, and among them all the child, in- 
quisitive and eager, stands where, seeing 
much, he can comprehend almost nothing, 
and therefore is not in the way of gaining 
for himself the habit of clear, strong thought. 
Sucb habit in the child or in the man is 
gained only by knowing the principles of 
things; so Froebel says we are to turn from 
this outside variety and give the child the 
inside unity from which they spring. The 
plane of outer life is the plane of result. It 
shows the conclusions of long continued ef- 
fort both in nature and in the work of man; 
and since all growth is expansion of life 
from some small seed or germ of interior 
vitality, it is in the order of true education 
that the child should be drawn at once from 



35 



the distraction of tbe outer to tlie unity of 
the begiuuings of things, from the piano of 
results to the plane of origins. We are to 
give the opposite of what the child sees, the 
heart of things, the cause for the existence 
and character of what lies without. So that 
the child can be led from within outward 
along the lines of law. This explains why 
wo find, as the outfit of the kiudergarten, 
ouly three simple bare forms — the ball, the 
cube, and the cylinder, and the limited set 
of forms, faces, lines, and points that are de- 
rived from these three originals. Froebel 
went to the three forms which, in their j)re- 
cision, stand as the basis of creation, the 
starting -points of all construction and 
growth in nature, and of all construction 
and development of thought in man. These 
elementary forms of nature and life show 
to the child what he cannot see for himself. 
They give the laws of things. All things that 
exist are form without and force within — that 
is, as the forces of life and nature act in con- 
nection with one another they take visible 
form, and all forms that are thus produced 
grow out of and are related to these three, 
which are represented in the Second Gift of 
the kindergarten. Froebel sees the child in 
ignorance of all things, knowing nothing 



36 



of inetliods, movements, and measurements, 
either of tbe Leavens above or the earth be- 
neath ; the flying of trains, the flash of a 
telegraphic message, or the building of an 
Eifiiel tower. He is in a world of wonders, 
all equally unreadable. Froebel saw, witb 
insight beyond that of any other teacher, 
that the child should be led, not from thing 
to thing in the completeness of its finished 
detail, but directly iuward to the starting- 
points of each, to the principles upon which 
each rests. And in doing this he compre- 
hended that the child in his ignorance re- 
peated the history of his race. There was a 
time when the earth was not compassed with 
a belt of human construction, when oceans 
separated the lands which they now con- 
nect, when the railway and the steamship 
did not reach from China round agaiu. 
Whatever were th'e beginnings of historj'^, 
and these we do not know, the general rec- 
ord of man goes to show that he has been 
slow to comprehend the world of nature, 
slow to learn the laws by exercise of which 
he could be master upon the earth. 

From the East the progress of the race 
has been westward. We hear the echo of 
the songs of India, and leave untouched the 
veil of Isis ; but while acknowledging mys- 



teries that are not revealed, we cau move 
from Asia iuto Europe and across to Amer- 
ica, following tokens of a life tliat began in 
rudest, most primitive forms. Reading by 
the fragments left lyiug in the drifted soil 
we learn that men were once ignorant of 
Nature. They ranged about as fishers mere- 
I3", haunting the river valleys, and leaving be- 
hind their piles of bones — the kitchen-mid- 
dens — that tell their simple story. Gradually 
this roughest life gave place to somethiug 
better — to staying in a place to j)lant and 
reap a harvest, to moving out of caves and 
building huts and houses. Theu came the 
use of metals, superior to the stones and 
bones that had before served all purposes; 
and after that, as one group learned from 
another, this first grasp upon Nature's laws 
and materials having been made, men went 
forward in paths of industry, organizing and 
expanding their lives at every step. 

As we look back at history, however, we 
see how slow has been the progress of the 
race, and what a mighty effort has been 
made by the great men who have opened 
the way through learning some new x^rinci- 
ple of natural science. Their questions were 
all of principle and plau, of origin and end; 
and for centuries the calm face of Nature 



vouclisafed no reply. Pythagoras, Plato, 
Aristotle, with Nvhat earnestuess they strove 
to look through creation to catch the secret 
of movement, the direction aud the method of 
its forces ; and what curious prejudice ruled 
the mind of the race in those darker days. 
Copernicus might lahor, aud Galileo might 
die ; men would not yield their opinions and 
be set in the way of truth. And after these, 
how like a child creeping upon its knees be- 
fore it finds the law of its erect, vertical 
bearing, did Kepler toil through years of 
baffled inquiry before he won the true sight 
by which he could explain and reveal the 
heavens and the earth, and open the way 
for Newton aud the heroes of science who 
have taught us the construction of the earth, 
the development of plants, the progress aud 
X'elationship of animal life, the anthropology 
and ethnology of man, and his religious, 
political, and social history. 

In all this striving, success has been de- 
clared by the advance of man upon new 
territory, by his crossing the seas, by his 
erection of buildings, and his annihilation 
of space aud time. And if we look past the 
outermost aspect of this occupation of the 
earth, we come to one great principle that 
underlies the whole, and here we find Froe- 



bel looking from uature and the work of 
man to the child. In all that has been done, 
men have been seeking for the relationship 
of one thing to another. This, and this only, 
gives the key to j)Ower — to know how things 
are related, how they act one npon another, 
how they repel and attract, how they bind 
into one, and how they disperse and scatter 
the vital forces of nature. Nature, as a whole, 
is the manifestation of energy; her sepa- 
rate parts, visible and invisible, are only so 
many expressions of the one great life that 
flows through suns, moons, stars, and earths. 
This force is separated ; set in many forms. 
Some of them will work together, and some 
of them will not. Each great invention has 
been completed by the discovery of this law 
of relationship of parts, by learning how to 
adjust and relate in a working order cer- 
tain forms and forces. Whenever a point is 
gained man has an extension of power, and 
the world profits thereby. And here lies the 
reason for keeping in mind the analogy be- 
tween the single life and that of the world. 
What the world has sought for the child 
meets. The world has sought for the prin- 
ciples of things, for the methods of power 
in its first movements outward from the cen- 
tre. Amid the diversity of uature this sim- 



40 



plioity lias beeu hard to fiud, and iu the 
desire to help the child, so that he in his 
turn may help the world, Froebel gives hiui 
the three forms that lie at the heart of all 
construction and all growth, and begins to 
teach him how to think, how to come up on 
to the plane of the rational mind, by show- 
ing him the relation of one thing to another ; 
showing him how to construct, how to sepa- 
rate, and bow to ally with mathematical 
precision the forms, faces, angles, lines, and 
points that men have been dealing with 
since the world began. Thus, before the 
child reads, and begins to range abroad at 
his own will, he is set face to face with Nat- 
ure, and is shown some of the secrets of 
relationship by means of which the world 
has moved and the race has grown from 
childhood to maturity. 



SEED, FLOWER, AND FRUIT OF THE 
KINDERGARTEN^ 

BY ALICE WELLINGTON RQLLINS. 

There was once a cliild, and because he 
was born less fortunate than others, he was 
less good. And those people who were bet- 
ter, because more fortunate, said among 
themselves : " It is very sad that he should 
not be good. Let us be kind to him. What 
shall we do?" And they said, "Educate 
him." But what is education? "It is 
teaching him facts. We will teach him that 
two and two make four. Then he will be in- 
telligent, and when he is intelligent he will 
be good." So they taught him that two and 
two make four, but he did not become any 
better, nor did he seem much more intelli- 
gent. Then they said, " Perhaps it is the 
bad air." For they were teachiug him in 
the same old haunts where he had lived, 
where the rooms were small and stifling, so 
that his muscles were cramped and there 



42 



■was scarcely any air to breatbo, aud what 
be did breathe was abiiost poisouous. And 
they said: "We will be kinder still. Wo 
will bnild him a separate school-house, in a 
good locality, with large rooms and plenty 
of windows, and good air outside of the 
windows." 

This they did, and taught liim again that 
two and two make four. This time he 
learned it more quickly, because the air was 
better; but he did not become a good boy, 
and, although he had a little more intelli- 
gence, it seemed almost as though he used 
his intelligence to increase his ingenuity in 
evil resources. Then they said, " We will 
build other schools — moral schools, Sunday- 
schools — and tell him how beautiful it is to 
do right, and how terrible to do wrong." 
But this did not have any percex^tible effect 
upon him. Then they said, " We will 
frighten him ; we will tell him that God 
will punish him if he does wrong." But he 
wasn't frightened. And then they said, " We 
will punish him ourselves; we will build a 
jail, with bolts and bars, and shut him up if 
he does wrong." 

But still he did wrong, aud was shut up ; 
and when he came out he only did more 
wrong, because all the time he had been in 



jail be had been angry at having been shnt 
up, and had been thinking what he conld 
do when he should get out to show that he 
was angry. And then came some one who 
said, "Let me take bim ;" and she took him 
into a room where there was a piano and an 
American flag and a big heaiJ of damp clay, 
and she said to him, " Would you like to 
make a rabbit?" And his eyes sparkled, 
and he said he should. Then she took some 
of the damp clay, and began moulding it in 
her fingers, and she let him take some, and 
watch how she worked 5 and so they worked 
together, and by-and-by his rabbit was al- 
most as good as hers. Then each of them 
made another rabbit, and she asked, " How 
many rabbits are there now ?" And he said, 
instantly, " Four rabbits." 

This time he had learned his lesson very 
quickly, and his eyes sparkled as he gave 
the right answer. Then she told him he 
could not make any more rabbits that day, 
but he might come again the next day at the 
same hour, and they would make some more 
rabbits, and perhaps a bird. So he went 
away ; but he was so interested in the rabbit- 
making that all the rest of the day he was 
thinking about it, and picking up a little 
mud in the street, not to throw at a police- 



man, as he used to do, but to try makiug a 
rabbit of it ; and as it was not very easy, lie 
tried it again with a bit of dough from the 
bread his mother was making. And he was 
so busy over this, and so happy, that he for- 
got all about a lie he had meant to tell and 
a gingerbread cake he had meant to steal. 
This was what had happened to him : he had 
learned even more easily than before that 
two and two make four, but something else 
had happened to him — he had forgotten to 
be bad. He had not been given any higher 
aspirations, any wider knowledge of good 
and evil, or the results of good and evil; he 
had simply forgotten about evil, because he 
had been interested in something else. In- 
terested — that is the magic word. The prob- 
lem of the age is to make virtue, knowledge, 
philanthropy, interesting. We all know 
the witty advice, " If you would be wise and 
good and happy, educate your grandmother," 
And in this recognition of the immense power 
of heredity, we are apt to acknowledge the 
discouraging factor of the impossibility- We 
cannot educate our grandmother, we say; 
but there are grandmothers whom we can 
educate. The children of to-day are the 
grandmothers of the future ; we can educate 
them. Let who will make the laws of the 



nation, so ouly we cau educate the children. 
And what is education ? It is teaching peo- 
ple to know things, you will say. So it is, 
to some extent ; but to a far greater extent 
it is teaching them to feel things — as the lit- 
tle boy in the kindergarten feels far more pa- 
triotic waving a little American flag as he 
marches round the room to a stirring strain 
from the piano than he feels after he has sim- 
ply learned the fact from a teacher or book 
that he has a country and ought to love it. 

This, then, is the triple advantage of tlie 
system of education which begins with the 
kindergarten! it teaches facts, it develops 
the faculty of being amused, it encourages 
the power to create. The ordinary primary- 
school teaches facts ; but the kindergarten 
teaches them earlier, more thoroughly, and 
more easily, while in addition it develops 
character, rouses feeling as well as knowl- 
edge ; teaches children to work, and, what is 
more important, teaches them to like work. 
It is foolish literary pathos to excite sympa- 
thy for the degradation of the poor by writ- 
ing, as Mrs. Browning does, of the children of 
the slums : 

"Bnt the young, young children, Oh, my brothers, 
They nre weeping bitterly; 

They are weeping in the play-time of the others, 
In the country of the free." 



No ; they are not weeping ; let us not pre- 
teud for a moment that they are. They are 
perfectly happy, but they are happy in mis- 
erable ways. They are shouting, laughing, 
leaping, grimly rollicking in what they know 
as ''fun," proud of their ingenuity in lying, 
blissful in their ability to fasten fire-crackers 
to clogs' tails and tin pans to cats', swearing 
with delight, boasting in riotous glee of 
tlieir stolen gingerbread. This is the most 
tragic thing in their fate ; they are not un- 
happy in their degradation. We are to 
teach them not to be happy, but to be happy 
in wise, sweet ways, and that is what the 
kindergarten begins. Children are not happy 
in merely learning that two and two make 
four ; but they are happy in learning how 
to make four rabbits out of two and two bits 
of damp clay. Which brings us to the third 
advantage of the kindergarten and its es- 
pecial adaptation to the poorer classes — its 
power in developing the faculty to create. 
'* Of what use to the poor boy," it may be 
asked, " can it possibly be to learn to make 
rabbits out of clay?" It is of no special 
moment that he should learn to do so, but it 
is of great importance that he should learn 
to make something. 

'' Could you make as good a pair of shoes 



as that wbeu you came here ?" asked a visitor 
of a convict iu prison. 

''No, sir/' was the reply. ''If I couhT 
have, I'd never have been here." 

It will be objected that perhaps a practical 
vent is good for restless thought and hand, 
but that it is unwise to foster in the poor an 
artistic taste which may merely make them 
long restlessly for advantages and things 
they are never to have. Those who make 
this plea forget that the kindergarten tends 
to develop not art merely, but artists; not 
taste merely, but i)ower; not eujoyment 
merely, but ability ; not things alone, but 
thinkers. It does not teach children to 
crave what they cannot get, but to create 
what otherwise they could not get. It is 
opening a vent for ambition instead of 
stilling it. 

"What did you think of the new little 
girl, Charlie ?" asked Charlie's mother, when 
lie came home from the kindergarten. 

" I don't think much of her," was the 
lordly reply ; " she doesn't even know what 
a cube is." 

This is a typical effect of the system ; it 
does uot so much teach children to know 
things as create in them an ambition to 
know things. Whatever we may think of 



it for tlie rich, it would seem self-evident 
that it is what is needed for the children of 
the poor. 

The proposition to introduce kindergarten 
into the public schools has been opposed by 
one of the Board of Education on the ground 
that it would be an "outrage" to put upon 
the city the burden of an expense of $3,000,- 
000, merely that the children of the city may 
begin the study of grammar a little earlier. 
The advocates of the measure acknowledge 
frauklj'^ that to them an exx:)euse of $3,000,000 
to a city which numbers nearly 2,000,000 in- 
habitants, and whose real estate and personal 
property are assessed at nearly two thou- 
sand millions of dollars, would not seem too 
great, even if "merely" there would thereby 
be secured to the next generation a little 
more, a little easier, or a little better educa- 
tion. To which may be added a gentle re- 
minder as to the art of putting things: a tax 
of $3,000,000 for a city sounds large ; but the 
sum decreases in effect if yon put it in a way 
equally true, that the average individual 
tax would be but a dollar and a half per- 
haps; while if the city would grant even 
the $26,000 which has been asked in humbler 
hours for making the experiment, the in- 
dividual tax would hardly be twenty-five 



49 



cents a year, uo more than many a man 
tosses to a beggar on the street many days 
on bis way up-town. But to tbose wbo 
tbink otber and stronger arguments neces- 
sary, we would respectfully present tbe ap- 
peal as one for self-preservation and tbe city 
interests. It is an appeal tbat tbe cbildren 
of tbe city — and we trust tbe patbos of tbe 
name will toucb tbe imagination — may look 
to tbeir parents for tbe same training of tbe 
soul as well as tbe mind tbat tbe individual 
cbild bas a rigbt to demand from tbe indi- 
vidual parent; and tbis, not "merely" for 
tbe individual good of tbe cbild, but for 
tbe eventual benefit to tbe parent. We ap- 
peal for kindergarten in the puhlic schools on 
tbe ground tbat it will tend, far more tban 
any otber iufluence possible for tbe city to 
exert en masse, to tbe training of good citi- 
zens. We appeal for an expense of |3,000,000 
not " merely " because tbe cbildren of tbe 
city will be made bappier and more intelli- 
gent in scbools of wbicb tbe pre-eminent ad- 
vantage is less tbat tbey begin education 
early tban tbat tbey begin it rUjhtlij, but 
also to save tbe city an eventual expense of 
$10,000,000 or more for " bomes " and jails 
and paujier institutions and reformatories, 
wben later in life its neglected cbildreu 
4 



drift inevitably to the squalor, the want, tlie 
sliiftlessness, the wrong, that spring less 
from temperament than from neglected tem- 
perament. The individual parent feels the 
responsibility of heredity, dreads to discover 
in the child seeds of evil sown by himself. 
Not less should a great city realize its power 
to determine the heredity, not of its own im- 
mediate generation of children, but that of 
their children, exactly so far as it consents 
to endow its own children with advantages 
perfectly in its power to bestow, and certain 
to react in the years to come with a force 
that grows with geometric progression ; a 
force which, leaving out of consideration 
the interests of the children themselves, 
will be of incalculable power to the city it- 
self Divert the minds of the young, and 
you will not need to reform the old. Neglect 
tbe mind of the young, and you will not be 
able to protect yourself from them when 
you are old. 

It will at once be ashed : " Granting 
the value of the results claimed, by what 
methods are they secured by the kinder- 
garten system ? How is it possible for citi- 
zens of so much finer calibre to develop mere- 
ly from beginning school a little earlier." 
To which we must repeat that it is not in 



51 



the beginniug earlier, but iu the beginning 
tetter, that the miracle lies. The ordinary 
primary-school teaches truths as facts; the 
kiudergarteu teaches the same, aud more 
truths, as impressions. A boy may forget or 
disdain a fact; but he never recovers from 
an impression. It is atmosphere, not dogma, 
that educates; the kindergarten surrounds 
the child with an atmosphere of culture and 
intelligence and good-will to men. Said the 
boy Heine, of the old French drummer in his 
father's household : " When he talked about 
liberty, I did not understand; but when he 
played the Marseillaise on his drum, then I 
understood." The kindergarten plays the 
Marseillaise on the finely responsive chords 
of the young soul, which will never vibrate to 
any other intiuence so eifectively. The ordi- 
nary school tells the child he ought to love 
his country ; the kindergarten maJces him 
love it. The one tells him facts about Wash- 
ington and Jefferson and patriotic lives; the 
other gives him a little American flag to 
wave as he marches round the room to a 
stirring national air, and behold! he himself 
has become patriotic! And as he is made 
indelibly patriotic by a mere impression, so 
lie is taught indelibly iu other ways, by 
other impressions, to be courteous, to be 



houest, to be uuselflsb, to "be thouglitfal, to 
regard the riglits of others, to feel the im- 
pulses of love and teuderuess and symiiathy, 
and of self-respect, and to be sensitive to 
beauty. No one denies the importance of 
these factors of education ; but it is general- 
ly supposed that everything except intel- 
lectual facts will be taught the child at 
home and in society ; and it is too often for- 
gotten that too many of the children of the 
city find the worst of influences in their 
homes and the society that surrounds them. 
There is not a game, not a talk, not a pict- 
ure, not a song, in the kindergarten method 
which lightens learning by games and talks 
and pictures and songs, but has an ulterior 
motive of teaching a fact, or imparting a 
feeling, by making an impression. 

This, then, is the chief value of the kin- 
dergarten method; it fixes habits in the 
mind, as important as the habits of the body 
or of occupation. That which you make a 
habit for yourself becomes the good or bad 
taste of your children and the virtue or vice 
of your grandchildren. We are all good or 
bad, not because of the circumstances that 
confront us, but because of the attitude of 
mind in which we confront circumstances. 
Aheap of damp clay in the road suggests to 



53 



one boy modelling a rabbit, to another mak- 
ing a mnd-ball to throw at a policeman. 
Yon cannot arrange the life of your child 
so that he shall never have to pass a heap 
of damp clay ; bnt you can train his mind 
in channels that shall determine what he 
he will think about when he meets damp 
clay. You cannot make a boy good by 
hemming him in with silken curtains; evil 
dwells within as well as without, and he 
may need outlets rather than curtains. Nor 
can you keep yourself safe from evil by lock- 
ing up evil in a distant part of the city. 
You cau neither lock evil out or in. You 
can only supply educational forces by which 
to determine the attitude of the growing 
soul to the evil which it is liable at any mo- 
ment to meet from within or without. It is 
in creating this atmosphere of taste that 
the Kindergarten excels; the taste that in a 
second generation becomes virtue. I can 
think of no better description of it than as 
a divine hypnotism of the soul ; a method of 
mental " suggestion," by which the teacher 
determines for the young soul under her 
guidance, not the circumstances it is to en- 
counter, but the attitude it shall assume 
towards whatever circumstances may con- 
front it, whether of good or evil. 



54 



Many have objected to the public recog- 
nition of kindergarten on tbe ground that 
their own children in private schools have 
not been benefited by it. They forget a 
difference in the aim of education in pri- 
vate and public schools. In the latter 
its object is not to ornament with " fanci- 
ful " education the minds of children already 
too much amused perhaps at home, but to 
reach a class for whom whatever seems "or- 
namental" or "fanciful" in the method, 
is the only ornament of their lives. To 
children with dozens of "gifts" and hun- 
dreds of playthings in their homes, the two 
or three more little "gifts" and toys of the 
kindergarten may become "confusing;" 
but to those who have only these two or 
three — and a large part of the children of 
our public schools must necessarily come 
from the very poor — it is probable that they 
are not confusing at all. If the " little 
games " that are their only games, perhaps 
seem frivolous to those whose whole life out 
of school is one happ}^ game, two things may 
be remembered — first, that the innocent 
amusement, so important a part of all edu- 
cation, is doubly important among a class 
in whom discontented brooding is especially 
to be avoided ; and, secondly, that every one 



of these apparently simple "games" has 
some ulterior object iu actual instruction. 

lu reply to a prefereuce that has been 
expressed for the old-fashioned education 
which produced '^ Whittier, Longfellow, Brj-- 
aut, Prescott, Curtis, and Abraham Lincoln," 
we may say that the object of the public 
kindergarten is not to produce Whittiers 
and Longfellows. They may be trusted to 
produce themselves. The object is to train 
the average respectable citizen. Not to de- 
velop exceptional men, but to raise the level 
of the average. Not to inspire genius, but 
to lift mediocrity. Not to inculcate exces- 
sive virtue or ability, but to save from in- 
capacity, and from the grinding poverty, the 
mischievous idleness which sow the seeds of 
crimiuals. Not to create six distinguished 
meu whose very prominence comes from the 
low average of the rest ', but to elevate a 
little the entire community of those Avhora, 
as Kingsley says, we call " on Sundays our 
brethren and on week-days 'the masses.'" 
Even in the case of Whittiers and Liucolns, 
one may still say, iu emulation of the Free 
Traders who, if assured that the country 
has prospered under Protection, at once 
advance the argument that it would have 
prospered more under Free Trade, that great 



ns are Wliittiers and Lincolns, perhaps even 
tliey would have been a little greater if they 
liad enjoyed in youth the inestimable privi- 
lege of wet clay and cubes ! It may be noted, 
also, that of the six great men mentioned all 
but one belonged, not only to the privileged 
classes, but to the exceptionally privileged 
classes, to whom every possibility of culture 
and generous education was open in their 
own homes. This is not the class for whom 
we make the appeal of a public kindergar- 
ten. To aim at developing Bryants and 
Lowells would be a species of intense selfish- 
ness, as we shall be certain of reaping an 
immense reward for ourselves in the event- 
ful returns ; but we advocate the public 
kindergarten, not in the hope of reaping 
exquisite poems, noble satires, lofty elo- 
quence, inspiring comradeship, and mag- 
nificent statesmen, but in the hope of mak- 
ing a little happier, and therefore a little 
better, and very much wiser and more ca})- 
able, lives that may never come in touch 
with our own except in the general brother- 
hood of humanity. 

We have even heard it in all serious- 
ness suggested that the old-fashioned meth- 
od of education at West Point had pro- 
duced very fine men and citizens without 



57 



the aid of kindergarten. The superiority of 
West Point is indisputable; still, if it is 
remembered how exceedingly few can enter 
West Point of the sixty million inhabitants 
of the United States, perhaps we shall re- 
ceive a less grudging consent to devoting a 
little of the public money to those whose 
problem of education is not that of kinder- 
garten or West Point, but of kindergarten or 
nothing. The aim of a public kindergarten 
is to develop early in life, among a class less 
favored than those who usually enter West 
Point, a happiness of disposition which shall 
prevent the habit of brooding discontent; 
the manual ability to earn a reasonable live- 
lihood ; the quickened intelligence and ca- 
pacity to make Labor a skilled and efificient 
agent in securing to itself rights which at 
present it covets without knowing how to 
deserve and obtain them ; a result which 
would be the most reliable safeguard we can 
oppose to the unfortunate condition which 
at present compels ofttimes eight thousand 
of the glittering bayonets of West Point to 
step forward to control eight hundred dis- 
contented and brooding hearts from the 
haunts of labor. The bayonets disperse the 
hearts — for a time — but the education begun 
in the spirit of the kindergarten will disperse 



the discontent and brooding for all time. 
And to secure this admirable aim, the hy- 
giene of kindergarten drill plaj's no small 
part. Whatever value mere intellectual 
education possesses, it is comparatively weak 
without the support of sanitary foundation. 
That so large a part of kindergarten teach- 
ing is given while the children are in mo- 
tion, not nervous and rebellious motion, but 
healtliful, natural, and charming exercise, 
tends much to that quickened circulation of 
tlie blood which brings, with rapid change 
of impressions and wise release from the 
tension of cramped muscles and slowly 
drawn breath, the sanity of strong bodies. 
Add to this that these are not mere gym- 
nastic exercises, but that the mind and im- 
agination and thoughts are kept healthfully 
at work while tlie exercise is going on, and 
you- will penetrate the secret of the new 
education. Forbid the restlessness of a 
child, and the blood stagnates, and will 
eventually have its revenge, whatever the 
apparent spiritual gain in self-control ; give 
the restlessness a vent in right directions, 
and you have made a friend instead of an 
enemy of the forces of nature. One of the 
most admirable sayings in that delightful 
book AmieVs Journal, is this, "Every real 



need is stilled, every vice stimulated, by satis- 
faction." This is a certain test for ^Ybat shall 
be done in any given case. If a cbild craved 
brandy, you would not give it some to quiet 
its craving; you yrould know the certain 
result would be before long a greater crav- 
ing for more. But if a cbild wants to move, 
and you let liim move, you have secured 
more reijose for him and from him in the 
end. 

At a recent exhibition of the graduating 
kindergarten teachers from the Normal Col- 
lege, a daiuty little by -play in the back- 
ground, of which only a few spectators were 
aware, was the prettiest object-lesson that 
could have been prepared as an illustration, 
though the performers were all uncouscious 
of the parts they were playing. A mother 
among the audience had brought with her a 
three-year old boy, thoroughly alive, alert, 
and restless. He toddled about, and cooed 
and amused himself with pulling at things, 
till the distressed mother felt she must soon 
take him away, and certainly heard and saw 
nothing of what w^as going on while she was 
there. Suddenly the row of teachers on the 
platform rose and began reciting, illustrat- 
ing by graceful and appropriate gestures 
all the things that a little boy saw while he 



wasruiiniug across a field — the pretty brook, 
rniiniug almost as fast as he ; the fishes leap- 
ing in the brook j the tall grass looking 
over into the brook to see, too ; the tiny 
bird's nest in the grass ; the birds flying up 
from the nest and into the sky ; the long, 
lovely, floating clouds, sailing away, away, 
away, across the blue heaven. Struck by the 
sudden silence of my baby- friend, I turned 
to see if his mother had taken him away, 
and beheld him transfigured from a naughty 
little boy into something far better than a 
saint — an interested, eager, silent, intelligent 
child. He was standing on tiptoe in his 
chair, silent as a statue in one sense, since 
he was no longer restless, but with his face 
lifted, his eyes intently watching the motions 
on the i)ki^Porm; his little eyes alight, his 
whole attitude eager, attentive, interested, 
though of course he could not understand a 
word that was said. His tiny hands kept 
time with the graceful gestures of the 
teachers in the distance, as their hands 
swayed with the breeze, or flew with the 
birds, or leaped witb the fishes, or sailed 
with the clouds. His restlessness had not 
been checked ; for even when a mother can 
control a turbulent child by forcing it to sit 
still either by a caress or a threat, she often 



61 



does not realize the miscbief she is doiug to 
the peut-up little hody and the rebellious 
little mind; no, his restlessness had not 
been checked, but turned in a beautiful di- 
rection. He was silent now, but his mind 
was active and his little heart was happy. 
He had not been told he must not move, 
but he had been shown how he could move 
still more delightfully. He was keeping 
very still, but his imagination was doiug 
wonderful things. He need not hush his 
little voice, but see if he could imitate a 
bird. He had not been thwarted, he had 
been developed. He went home, not worn 
out and cross, but gentler and brighter than 
ever. He had not resisted his impulse to 
be naughty, but he had found it pleasauter 
to be good. Unless he kept quite still, he 
could not see what was going on. He had 
not learned the great duty of self-control, 
perhaps, but he had acquired something 
better — a tendency to habits that would not 
need to be controlled. 

The physical restlessness, in one way so 
troublesome when it is the nervous outbreak 
of unused energies, in another way so de- 
lightful, when it is spontaneous but well- 
directed motion, moving with physical grace 
to the rhythm of an intellectual idea, sug- 



62 



gests another great .advantage of the kinder- 
garten in the public schools. We know that 
the kindergarten makes children happy, in 
itself alone an ohject worth sacrificing much 
for; we know that it trains the heart and 
the artistic sense as well as the mind; that 
it cultivates feeling as well as knowledge, 
courtesy and manners as well as facts, imag- 
ination as well as reason and memory ; hut 
more than that, it keeps the little body well, 
and the little mind sane as well as active; 
or perhaps one might even say, with still 
more justice, sane because it is active in 
many, and always in wise ways. The nec- 
essary captivity of poor little restless bodies 
in the long school hours is well known to be 
an objection. During an investigation of 
the over-crowded primary-schools, the state- 
ment was made that even the recess given 
could hardly afford much relief; there was 
no yard big enough for the children to rnn 
about in, and even the rooms were not large 
enough for free movement; so that to ob- 
tain something of the desired release for 
fretted limbs, the children were formed into 
files and marched ronnd the aisles and down- 
stairs! Take, again, in schools a little more 
fortunate, the gymnastic class, a form of or- 
ganized exercise only a makeshift at the 



best, with its dull, heavy, self-conscious, ex- 
cessive effort at motion. Of bow little ben- 
efit tliis deliberate exercise compared with 
the siiontaueons flatter of little hands, not 
weighed down with dumb-bells, but made 
alive with eagerness, lifted above the head 
and sailing with clouds, or bending like 
grasses, or flying like birds. It is the dif- 
ference between giving plants lattice-work 
to support them, and giving them the sun 
and air and water that enable them to sup- 
port themselves. Add to this the glad out- 
break into well-trained singing, the patriotic 
march with banners, the graceful games that 
teach them to be kind as well as clever; 
then they come back to their little chairs, 
glad to rest, instead of hating an enforced 
stillness, ready to learn arithmetic and color 
by stringing beads, or to make a lovely de- 
sign for mamma's bureau-cover out of a geo- 
metrical problem. We have long known 
that sedentary training of the mind, even to 
very high things, is somewhat dangerous. 
First we tried physical exercise as abrupt and 
severe and unnatural as the intellectual ef- 
fort, in the hope to counteract the intel- 
lectual strain ; but gymnastics at the best 
are but a corrective, a medicine ; what we 
need, old and young, is the rounded develop- 



uieut where nothing is abnormal, and where 
we need not balance one error by another. 
This is the element that Delsarte has intro- 
duced into gymnastics — a mental idea, a 
feeling of the heart, an artistic sympathy 
with grace, and a sense of dainty humor. 
These make movement a delight, and itself 
a development and an inspiration, not a 
mere palliative relief. The mental and moral 
sanity that comes from perfect health, and 
the perfect health that depends so much on 
mental and moral sanity, are exquisitely in- 
terwoven. You can aid each by developing 
the other. The kindergarten system that 
keeps body and mind in harmony is working 
incalculably more good than the mere intel- 
lectual training of the ordinary schools; the 
latter at best can only congratulate tliem- 
selves when the pupils, by sheer effort at 
self-control, li a ve remembered to behave quite 
properlj^ all through the session. 

To illustrate, however, how the old order 
changes, and how now it gives place to the 
new, a brief series of contrasts may be given 
between the old and the new systems, as fol- 
lows; the idea being to show, not the ab- 
solute method, but the difference in spirit, 
which is at the base of the two kinds of in- 
struction. 



65 



Old-Fashioned Teacher. ''Take care, 
Jobiiuy ! I see you are restless. Unless 
you learu to sit perfectly still, I shall have 
to give you a bad mark." 

KiNDERGARTEX Teacher ^' I See you are 
restless, Johnny. Suppose we play a game 
to rest ourselves a little, and move about. 
We mustn't interrupt our lessons, but we 
can play astronomy, and that will keep us 
moving; because, you know, though the 
stars look so quiet, a great many of them do 
keep moving all the time. Margaret shall 
be the sun, and Johnny shall be the earth, 
and you must turn rouud on your owu feet, 
Johnny, all the time that you keep moving 
round the sun. That is the way the earth 
does, and Herbert can be the moon, and 
keep going round the earth, that is, round 
Johnny, while Johnny keeps going round 
Margaret. Now I think Jobnny will soon 
be tired enough to want to be a boy again 
and sit still." 

O.-F. T. '^ Washington and Jefferson were 
very wise men who made good laws for their 
country. And you must all remember always 
to obey the laws, and if anything happens to 
the country, you must be willing to leave 
everything else to defend her. Now" see 

5 



if yon remember what laws Wasbingtou 
made." 

K. T. "Now we will march a w'hile. Here 
is a little American flag for j^ou all to wave, 
and Miss Fanny will play the piano, and 
you can all sing, if you like. Suppose 
we sing 'The Star- Spangled Banner;' or 
would you rather sing 'My Country, 'tis of 
Thee V To-morrow I shall dismiss school 
half an hour earlier, so that you can go out 
and see Sherman's funeral procession when 
it goes past here. What did Sherman do ? 
Well, to-morrow, when you have seen how 
much the country thought of him, and 
monrns him, I will tell you." 

O.-F. T. "I see, Johnny, that you cannot 
sit still, even w^hen you are afraid of a bad 
mark. Come here; I shall have to tie your 
bauds behind you, and then you must go 
and stand iu that corner half an hour, till I 
see you have learned to be quiet." 

K. T. " Now, children, if you are tired of 
marching, you can come and sit down. Here 
is a pencil and some paper, and I want you 
to draw me a picture of what you like best." 

O.-F. T. "When I came into the school- 
room this mornin": I found a caricature on 



the blackboard with ' Tcaclier ' written niuler 
it. The boy who did it must staud up and 
coDfess ; come here, sir!" 

K. T. "Now yon may bring me the pict- 
nres yon have drawn of what yon like best. 
Johnny's is a dog ; I can see it is a dog, 
though its legs are a little too short, Johnny. 
What is it ? Yon meant him to be running, 
and his legs look shorter when he is run- 
ning? Well, perhaps you are right; we 
will all look on the way home for a dog run- 
ning, and see if we think you are right. And 
Lucy has drawn a doll, and Katie an orange, 
and Bertie a stick of candy, and Mary has 
drawn a very pretty face ; so Mary likes some- 
body's fiice best. Whose face is it, Mary V 

Child (shyly). " Please, teacher, it's 
yours !" 

O.-F. T. "Two and two make four, and 
four and two make six, and six and two 
make eight. You must repeat that ten times, 
Johnny, before you can go liome." 

K. T. " Would you like to take home to 
mamma a string of beads? Well, here is a 
needle and thread and there are the beads. 
First, put on two blue beads, and then two 
red beads; that makes four beads; and then 
two purple beads, that makes six^ and then 



(58 



two white beads, that makes eight. Now we 
will put on another eight ; hut we'll chauge 
it a little : first two red, then two blue, then 
two white, and then two purple ; that makes 
another eight. Now tell me how we can 
make another eight, a little differently ; yes, 
that's right : two purple, two red, two bine, 
two white ; and now another ; w^liy, what a 
long string we're getting ! Here are ten eights 
already ; now yon can go home, and ask 
mamma how many beads there are in the 
whole string. She will tell you, and won't 
she be surprised! What is it? You don^t 
want to go home? you'd like to make anoth- 
er string for sister Jennie ? Well, Ave'U 
make another string. Only suppose wo 
make Jennie's different ; let's make hers a 
string of fives — two blue beads and then 
three red beads ; two purple beads and three 
white beads, till we get a string of ten fives. 
Then you must ask Jennie how many beads 
there are in all." 

O.-F. T. "Unless the boy who put that 
pin in my chair confesses at once, I shall 
have to keep the whole class in at re- 
cess !" 

K. T. " I'm very sorry, children ; but I 
shall have to stay in at recess to-day. You 



cau all go out in tlio yard and pla}'^ at what- 
ever you like. I meant to show you tbat 
new out-door game to-day; but I can't, be- 
cause yesterday some of you did not take as 
much pains as you could have taken with 
the designs I wanted you to make of colored 
paper. To-day I shall have to stay in and 
jdan a design for you that is easier. If you 
do this better when you come in, then to- 
morrow I'll go out with you at recess and 
show you the new game." 

O.-F. T. " And, children, Washington was 
a very remarkable man ; he never told a 
lie." 

KiXDERGARTEX Child. " Please, teacher, 
lots of people don't tell lies." 

K. T. '' Now, the boy who makes the pret- 
tiest house out of these twenty-five blocks, 
to-morrow can walk at the head when we 
march, and carry the big flag.** 

Kindergarten Boy. ''Please, teacher, 
you told us yesterday that we were always 
to let tlie girls go first." 

K. T. " Yes, that is the nicest way to do. 
Well, then, the boy who makes the prettiest 
house can choose which girl shall march at 
the head." 



70 



O.-F. T. " Henry Steele, you were live 
minutes late this morning ; I shall keep you 
in ten minutes after school." 

K. T. " Harry, you were five minutes late 
this morning; what did you see on the way 
that interested you so much? A hird teach- 
ing the little birds to fly ? Well, that was 
worth stopping for. Tell us about it, and 
perhaps we can make a new game like it. 
Now, to-morrow morning suppose you all 
take five minutes more on the w;iy to school, 
and see who will have the most to say about 
what he has seen on the way. The one who 
has seen the most things shall beat the drum 
w^heu we march, and the one who has seen 
the most interesting thing shall carry the 
flag. * There will be the same things for you 
all to see ; but the kind of things you do see 
and notice will show me what kind of a 
boy you are."' 

And the next morning, when Herbert Win- 
throp said he hadn't seen anything, because 
he came upon a man abusing a horse, and 
had run round the corner to find an officer 
to tell him he mustn't, the children all voted 
that Herbert should beat the drum, because, 
though he hadn't seen anything, he had done 
something, which was even better. 



71 



And to continue the ^Yise process of cou- 
deusatiou, let us reduce even this brief se- 
ries of contrasts to still briefer kindergarten 
axioms : 

The kindergarten child is not sent to 
school; he goes of his own accord. 

He is not kept in school; he stays, because 
he likes it. 

He does not go home as soon as he can ; 
he has to be told that it is time to go. 

What he hates — vacation. 

He does not answer questions ; he asks 
them. 

He learns, not what he is told, but what 
he finds out. 

He never forgets ; because he is never told 
anything which he has not lirst wanted to 
know. 

The child of the primary - school knows 
what he feels ; the child of the kindergarten 
feels what he knows. 



The ordinary boy crosses a fiekl to get 
somewhere; the child of the kiudergartea 
sees things on his way. 

The ordinary child remembers to be good ; 
the kindergarten child forgets to be nanghty. 

The high - school graduates exceptional 
scholars, who Avill frame wise laws for the 
community; the kindergarten trains a com- 
munity that will need less the restraint of 
so much law. 

The more public kindergartens now, the 
fewer jails hereafter. 

Mothers think up little things to amuse 
their children when they come home from 
school; kindergarten children bring home 
from school little things to amuse their 
mothers. 

Mothers tell their children pretty stories 
at bedtime to make them forget the weary 
hours at school ; kindergarten children ask 
for nothing better than to remember the 
pretty things they have learned, or heard, 
or seen, or made, at school, and repeat them 
to their mothers. 



lu tbe ordinary scliool the cliild feeds his 
mind; in the kindergarten his mind feeds 
him. 

In training the intellect merely, the ordi- 
nary teacher runs tbe risk of making a bad 
boy ^Yorse, by increasing his capacity, his 
ingenuity, his resources; in training the 
heart and cultivating the artistic sense, in 
addition to encouraging the mind, the kin- 
dergarten teacher is a homoeopathic physi- 
cian, constantly correcting and restraining 
the symptoms he develops. 



A PLEA FOR THE PURE KINDER- 
GARTEN. 

BY JENNY B. MERRILL. 

The kindergarten system olfers the most 
ingenious arrangement of exercises ever 
devised for the development of the child. 

The system is based upon philosophical 
principles — principles which do not diifer 
essentially from those propounded by other 
educators than Froebel, but in this system 
these principles are worked out to a practi- 
cal issue, the details of which are astonishing 
in their simplicity and in their adaptation of 
means to desired ends. 

The system may be called "an invention," 
for it is unique, and yet it is in reality noth- 
ing but a systematic arrangement of plays 
and occupations gathered from a careful ob- 
servation — 

(a) Of the methods of wise mothers. 

(b) Of children at play. 



(c) Of Nature iu the plant, animal and 
mineral kingdoms — 

(d) And a consideration of the fundamental 
industries of life, and the possibility of imi- 
tating such industries in children's play and 
work. 

The system of gifts and occupations is so 
philosophically arranged that it is a grave 
question how far it can he modified and the in- 
tegrity of the system fully preserved. This 
we shall endeavor to prove by an examina- 
tion of the various details of gifts and occu- 
pations, and by criticisms upon certain in- 
novations which have become more or less 
popular. 

It is one thing to understand, appreciate, 
and approve an educational principle, and 
another to apply it successfully. 

The kindergarten, as it is commonly seen 
and known, is a visible application of certain 
fundamental educational principle's. Many 
persons can see and appreciate the applica- 
tion who give no thought to the principles 
underlying it. It commends itself to those 
who love children and humanity because it 
furnishes pleasant employment for little 
hands, and brings the ready smile to the 
childish face ; but it is only after the closest 



76 



study that we begiu to realize the wonder- 
ful adaptation of meaus to ends iu this well- 
organized system. 

We speak, not of the great underlying 
principles of the kindergarten, which cau be 
variously applied at the different periods of 
school life, but of that definite arraugernent 
of gifts and occupations that was phiuned 
by Froebel for the child under seven years 
of age. 

It is becoming so general to hear of tlie 
kindergarten princ i[)les and their wider 
application, and of the freedom that may 
be exercised even in the use of the w^ell- 
known kindergarten material, that there 
is a danger of forgetting that Froebel 
was not only a philosopher but a ]}ractical 
U'orhnan. 

Rarely do we find such practical ability 
as a teacher united with such deep philo- 
sophic understauding of the child -nature 
and indeed of humanity in general. 

There is apparently a tendency at the 
present time, under the plea of elevating the 
spirit above the letter, to dei)art more or 
less widely from the exercises of the kinder- 
garten as developed by Froebel. But w^hen 
such a genius as Froebel, one who himself 
Avas the master-spirit, has given us the letter, 



it is Ijoth fittii]<5 aud safe tliat any departure 
be most carefully cousidered. 

It is our purpose to enumerate some of 
the details of the methods developed by 
Froebel from his lifetime of observation and 
experience, noting at the same time the need 
in the child which suggested the use of the 
particular means. 

I. We find a graded series of gifts and oc- 
cupations, the first six of which are num- 
bered to correspond with the year of intro- 
duction. 

These six gifts are, in general terms, mere- 
ly balls aud blocks ; aud what more ordinary 
playthings could have been selected? But 
when we examine into the details of ar- 
raugement, for example, of the First Gift, 
which consists of six small colored worsted 
halls with cords for suspension, we find that 
behind each descriptive adjective there is a 
philosophic reason. 

(a) And first, why a hall ? No one denies 
that a ball is a good plaything from child- 
hood to manhood, but how few babies bave 
actually received the ball for theirs/ play- 
thing, and at the early age suggested by 
Froebel ! What led Froebel to place tbe 
ball first f Its unity, its simplicity, its beau- 
ty, its ready motion, aud its significance as 



a symbol, for it may stand, as the cliild ad- 
vances, for the apple, orange, peacli, plum ; 
for the earth, sun, or moon. 

Its motions when suspended represent the 
ticking clock, the ringing bell, the turning 
wheel, the hopping bird. 

Its unity, simplicity, and beauty make it 
aj)pTopriate for the very early use suggested 
by Froebel, namely, suspending it over a 
child's bed at a proper distance from the 
eye, when the infant is but six weeks old. 
It soou becomes au object to hold the at- 
tention of the opening mind. This is so 
simple au exercise that eveu educated peo- 
ple often overlook its value, and eveu smile 
when a kindergartner mentions it. 

Many think that a red shawl, or a bright 
flower, or a variegated ball much larger in 
size, would answer the purpose. Others 
would prefer a hell or a rattle ! but Froebel 
insisted upon such an apparently trilling de- 
tail as a small red hall at the age of six weeks. 
Experience as well as reason show the value 
of his judgment. 

The child acquires a certain degree of 
concentration upou a given object, and as 
the same ball appears day after day for many 
weeks, we have an excellent illustration of 
the way in which "perception goes on per- 



fecting itself," so clearly set forth by Ros- 
mini. 

Let me attempt to imlicate the steps in 
tbe gronvth of the perception. At first the 
infant becomes conscious that " something 
exists."* Then possibly the bright color 
(red or yellow is taken) makes its impres- 
sion; then the simple roundness (of course 
this is not fully recognized at this point). 

Later comes thought of motion, for after 
a few weeks the ball is to be swung from 
right to left, and later still, forward and 
backward, and up and down. 

In the last exercise, after a time the ball 
touches the child's face or hands ; soon the 
child puts forth his hand, and after many 
efforts at last grasps it. Now comes percep- 
tion of distance and of substance ; the sense 
of touch and the muscular sense are aroused, 
and the notion of a solid is attained to a 
degree. 

Baby bites the ball ; it is soft. He throws 
it down ; it disappears. 

It may be argued that all these ideas would 
be gained gradually from any object, but 
would they all be united and recognized as 
belonging to one object so soon as by this 

* Rosmiui.— Sec. 109. 



80 



simple device of calling aud rccalliug the 
cliild's attention daily to one simple aud 
pretty form ? 

(b) But in the second place, wby s/j^balltj? 
Wby are certain fixed colors used, and wby 
are tbe balls of worsted ? 

Tbere is a reasonable answer to every 
question. 

Tbe six standard colors of tbe spectrum 
only are used ; here again we bave reference 
to nature ; tbe kindergarten material is full 
of such references. 

Tbe variety is sufficient for tbe first year ; 
a few strong impressions of color are made, 
and tbe nnmber, six, is not too many. 

Worsted is soft aud warm aud pleasant 
to tbe baby's toucb, aud it Avill not hurt. 
It makes a quiet playmate, and again it 
points to uature, for wben baby is old euougli 
for a simple story, be will find new pleasure 
in bis ball wben be bears about tbe lamb 
and its soft wool, wbicb it gives for a coat 
for baby and for bis ball. 

II. Anotlier important detail in tbe kinder- 
garten metbod is tbe selection of tbe forms 
of tbe Second Gift, viz.: tbe sphere, tbe cube, 
and tbe cylinder. 

Tbere are tbose wbo bave essayed to im- 
prove upon Froebel's judgment by adding 



the coue and spheroids, but we again recog- 
nize the superior wisdom of Froebel, who 
after careful thought rejected all but these 
three typical forms, and concentrated the 
chikVs attention upon them, leaving modifi- 
cations for advanced work. It requires 
great wisdom to be as simple as this great 
man. 

Mrs. Mary H. Peabody, in writing of the 
forms of this gift, says, "They are chosen as 
representing in school the gifts of the Crea- 
tor to man as seen in nature. 

"They present the substance of creation in 
its mineral, vegetable, and animal divisions. 
Overhead hangs the sphere of the sun; un- 
derfoot lies the crystal kingdom, whose sim- 
plest form is the cube; between the two, 
partaking of the qualities of each, rise the 
forms of life, all sliowing the cylindrical 
figure, from the grass of the field to the 
working fingers of man."* 

But not only is the selection of the 
forms of interest, but also the change of 
material from worsted to wood; again we 
find a natural substance waiting for its 
story to be told. 

While the sphere is retained as the cou- 

* Kindergarten and Primary School, page 121. 
6 



82 



necting liuk with the First Gift, we note 
the strong contrasts presented. 

The child learns by accentuating differ- 
ences. 

The high color is lacking. This helps to 
concentrate attention upon the form more 
perfectly. The material, wood, is hard, not 
soft; the noise as it falls or rolls on the table 
attracts attention through the sense of hear- 
ing, and is in strong contrast with the quiet 
worsted ball. The wooden sphere is heavy, 
not light; it is smooth, not rough. And all 
its differences seem to accord with the grow- 
ing child, for they suggest strength and more 
vigorous action. 

There is also the satisfaction of not hav- 
ing lost an old friend, for although, the differ- 
ences are all attractive, still the similarities 
are scarcely less pleasing. 

The wooden ball rolls and swings, ticks 
and rings, and is as active as a ball can be. 
But it can roll faster and farther, for there is 
less friction. 

Again another contrast — baby must not 
throw the wooden ball; it is hard; it will 
hurt ; it can break other objects. 

Here is a new lesson, one of carefulness; 
a lesson also in self-control, for there is 
scarcely a "must not" of any kind in the 



worsted ball. Now there must ueeds be re- 
straint, but baby is older aud ready for the 
moral lesson. 

Another important detail of method in re- 
gard to this gift is the order of presenting 
the forms. 

As already suggested, the method of the 
kindergarten presents strong contrasts to 
the child ; hence it may readily be inferred 
that the cube and not the cylinder is present- 
ed directly next the sphere. 

It must be after a study of the cube that 
the child gets his first true notion of the 
unity of the ball. He has no means of ap- 
preciating fully the simple outline of the 
sphere until he has compared it with the 
many sides, edges, aud corners of the cube. 

He returns to the sphere to find it all one. 

We will not undertake to enumerate all 
the striking contrasts between the sphere 
and the cube to which the attention of the 
child is called, but pass on to note the satis- 
faction which the child feels in receiving 
another block (the cylinder) which rolls like 
the ball, and yet stands firm like the cube, 
and is difterent from both. 

Here is seen the connecting link, the inter- 
mediate, which Froebel always strives to 
X)resent. This gift is an outward expression 



of the great iiiuer educatiouiil law which 
Froebel called " the law of the conuection of 
opposites," or " the law of contrasts and 
their connections."* 

There is a field, indeed, in the cylinder, for 
tlie stndy of both similarities and differences. 
Here in the Second Gift we find Froebel's key- 
note of method that nothing is ever to be 
studied for itself alone, but always in its re- 
lations to what has gone before. Thus the 
chain of association is strong, and what is 
learned is a gradual development corre- 
sponding to the inward development of the 
child. 

III. This careful connection of the new 
with the old is further illustrated in the in- 
troduction of the Third Gift, which as a 
whole presents the form of the cube, and yet 
is new in being subdivided into eight small 
cubes. 

We do not puri)0se to indicate the full use 
of any of these kindergarten gifts, but, as 
before stated, simply to set forth a few im- 
portant details, with their underlying j>hi- 
losophy, in order to establish our argument. 

In the Third Gift we will refer, therefore, 
to but one principle of method which, while 

* Kindergarten and Primary School, page 63. 



85 



it appears in the preoediug- gift, ])ecomes 
the maiu feature in this and several im- 
mediately succeeding gifts, viz.: building or 
construction. 

To lead the child to build, to construct, to 
make, is a ruling feature throughout the 
kindergarten methods; andFroebel, learning 
as he did from observing the ordinary plays 
of children, wisely phiced seveial sets of 
building-blocks among his gifts. 

They are so graded as to give each a spe- 
cific educational value. 

They differ from the sets of blocks in 
ordinary use in being, as a whole, cubical in 
form, and are composed of a fixed number of 
blocks, each separate block bearing a certain 
relation to the cube, which is always to be 
rebuilt at the close of the exercise. 

Thus, both analysis and synthesis are 
recognized. Other forms, as prisms, appear 
in the Fourth, Fifth, and Sixth Gifts, but 
they are always studied in relation to the 
cube, as half-cube, quarter-cube. 

The work to be accomplished by the use 
of these gifts is classified under three heads, 
namely : forms of knowledge, forms of life, 
and forms of beauty. 

This is a detail of method which appears 
again and again in tlie use of all the gifts 



and occnpatious, and is helpful, suggestive 
and comprehensive. By means of this divi- 
sion each gift and occupation of the kinder- 
garten is made to touch — 

1. Mathemaiics — in the ''forms of knowl- 
edge." 

2. Nature, and the common objects of life, 
whether natural or made 1)3" man — in the 
" forms of life." 

3. Art (especially designing) — in the 
" forms of beauty." 

There are incidents related in Beminis- 
cences of Froehel, showing how these diifer- 
ent phases of the work were the means of 
enlisting the interest and attention of men 
of widely dilferent professions. 

For example, "A privy councillor from 
Berlin," writes the Baroness Marenholz, 
" who had made some objections to the 
playing of the children, and had also re- 
peatedly opposed my statements, expressed 
the wish to learn the manner in which Froe- 
bel prepared for mathematical ideas by his 
plays and occupations. This hitherto very 
cold and reserved gentleman became quite 
animated when Froebel formed various fig- 
ures with his little sticks, and then explained 
by these embodied lines the areas enclosed 
in 



especially tbe relations of size and number 
of the geometrical figures, and theu still 
further the simple representations of form 
and number with other materials." * 

At the same time a young artist was pres- 
ent, who ashed impatiently, "Whether the 
contemplation of the beautiful at the child- 
age would not be more conducive to the 
awakening of the imagination than occuxja- 
tion with mathematical figures ?" 

" You are quite right," auswered Froebel ; 
" the beautiful is the best means of edu- 
cation for childhood, as it has been the 
best means for the education of the hu- 
man race. Look, here are my forms of 
beauty." 

This classification is, of course, for the 
teacher, and not for the child. Froebel thus 
comprehended tbe all-sided possibility of any 
material he put into th^ child's hand. 

He did not plan to teach number with one 
gift, and form with another, and natural his- 
tory with another; but he saw all the ele- 
ments in any one, and by this method, as 
well as others, the child is gradually led 
to feel, if not to know, the unity, which 
Froebel saw in life. 

* Reminiscences of Froebel. 



IV. The gifts already iDeutioued represent 
solid geometrical forms. 

Froebel decided to follow the analysis of 
the solid, and thus to present in orderly suc- 
cession, by means of his gifts, the plane, the 
line, and the point. 

Hence follow (1) the tablets, representing 
squares, triangles, etc. ; (2) wooden sticks and 
metal rings, representing the straight and 
curved edges found upon the solids already 
considered ; and, lastly, (3) lessons with seeds, 
representing the point. 

By the occasional use of the occupation 
of perforating, Froebel's thought is carried 
out in having the solid built up, as it were, 
in the child's work, as it has been previously 
analyzed ; for the occnj)ations proceed syn- 
thetically from the 2Joint, in pricking, to the 
line in sewing and drawing; to the surface, in 
paper cutting, folding, and weaving; to the 
solid in card-board work and clay modelling. 

V. It was a happy thought, indeed, as 
well as a truly philosophical one, which led 
Froebel in selecting the occupations of the 
kindergarten system to base them upon the 
simple industries of life. 

By this means the child follows the lead- 
ings of the race, and becomes one with it in 
so doinff. 



80 



For example, the occupation of weaving 
is a great favorite among children. It is 
after carefullj^ weaving in and out the little 
slips of paper — one np, one down ; two np, 
one down, etc., that the little weaver looks 
with au awakened and intelligent interest 
upon the little threads in a piece of cloth as 
the teacher draws them ont and shows how 
every little child owes a debt to the weaver 
for his clothing. 

Modelling in clay is another very ancient 
industry of the race which Froebel brought 
into the kindergarten. 

The favor with which children regard it 
is an indication that it meets a want in 
them as it certainly did in the race. Un- 
fortunately working directly in the soil is 
denied many children in city kindergartens, 
but this suggestion of the great industry of 
the cultivation of the soil is part of Froe- 
bel's complete system. 

VI We pass now to notice a few details 
of method which appeal to the feelings 
rather than the intellect. Pestalozzi em- 
phasized the principle "Activity is the law 
of childhood; let the child do; educate the 
hand," but he did not point out in detail 
how to do this. 

Froebel followed and worked out this 



90 



fmidameutal priuciple. The watchword of 
the kindergarten is ^' Do." Mothers rejoice 
in the kindergarten because it gives the 
child something definite to do. It furnishes 
a vent for their ceaseless activity. 

What do children do in the kindergarten ? 

They build, they sew, they draw, they 
prick, they weave, they fold, they cut, they 
paste, they mould, they dig, i\\Qy sing ; they 
imitate in gesture, hopping, flying, sowing, 
reaping, the turning of a wheel, the falling 
of the rain, the snow, the winding of a 
river, etc. 

Not only is the love of doing thus grati- 
fied, but nnderlying this is the appeal to 
the love of imitating ; for in all these ac- 
tivities the children become imitators of the 
work of real life which they see about them 
or hear described in stories. 

It is sympathy, a feeling with, that awa- 
kens this desire to imitate, and in the very 
act of imitating the feeling of sympathy 
with different workmen and even with dif- 
ferent animals is strengthened, and thus the 
child is again led to the feeling of unity, to 
which Froebel's philosophy ever tends. 

This love of unity is further strengthened 
by the simple detail of method in seating 
children in a kindergarten. 



91 



The cliildreu never sit as in ordiuary 
scLools, in rows, one behind tlie other, but 
around a table, that each may be, as it were, 
a part of a circle. So it is in standing in 
the ring during the playing of games. 

The use of the ring in playing games has 
long been in favor with children, but it was 
Froebel who realized its educational force. 
Possibly there is no more beautiful feature 
in the kindergarten. 

We deprecate any tendency towards fol- 
lowing a leader blindly. 

We recognize that there are those who 
would have a more perfect kindergarten on 
the beach, with only the sand and pebbles 
and shells with which to work out the 
forms of knowledge, forms of life, and forms 
of beauty, than others with a cabinet full of 
the best kindergarten material ; but it is 
often safer to distrust ourselves than the 
man of such pre-eminent genius. 

But there is a danger in having a system 
so complete in its detail, to which we will 
now refer. 

It lies in the possibility it affords to per- 
sons of inferior education to carry out these 
methods by simple imitation. While this is 
a serious evil, it is undoubtedly the key-note 



to the great success of the kiudergarten 
thns far. Haviug a genuine love for chil- 
dren as a foundation, the mere imitator can 
do much for the child by following closely 
the prescribed work in building, weaving, 
sewing, cutting, etc. It is by this practical 
advantage, as shown in the hands of mothers 
and nurses and teachers of infant education 
that the kindergarten has won its way so 
rapidly. 

At the same time the careful study of its 
philosophy is now putting it upon a surer 
foundation, and Froebel is being studied, not 
only as the '' old fool " who could amuse 
children, but as a philosopher whose "Educa- 
tion of Man" deals with universal problems. 

The very details of the system seem to 
prevent some students from seeing more 
than the balls, cubes, sticks, wires, and 
papers in use from day to day; but there 
are other deeper questions of study for the 
kiudergartner. Among these is the culti- 
vation of language. 

The recent report in Dr. Hall's Pedagogical 
Seminary* bears testimony to the superior 
use of language by kindergarten children. 

Out of seventy -five selected words, the 

* Pedngogical Semmary, No. 2. 



93 



chiltlreu from kiudergarteiis, comijared with 
cbildreu from families, showed themselves 
more familiar with all but fifteen of the 
seventy-five chosen words. This record is 
takeu from the Berlin table. In another 
sim.ilar report of children in Boston the 
percentage of ignorance of the words used 
as a test was greater in thirtj'-eight out of 
fifty w^ords among American children who 
had not attended kindergartens. 

The following nunsnal words I have gath- 
ered from a boy's vocabulary (now six years 
old) who has attended kindergarten two 
years : natives, complete, frolicsome, recep- 
tion, promoted, certificate, aritlimetic, re- 
lapse, ideas, attracted, intelligent, tint, fear- 
ful condition, contenting fun, patiently, 
extreme, such an invalid, dainty pink, 
credit, cylinder, hexagon, triangle, rhomb, 
weaving, slanting, arranging, pattern, in vent. 
These words are not all directly suggestive 
of kindergarten exercises, but many of them 
are. 

The child's language is cultivated in the 
kindergarten because he is brought into re- 
lation with new^ objects and is given names 
for these. He handles them again and 
again, and is gradually led to describe them, 
to tell what they can do. He is also led to 



tell where oue part is iu relation to other 
parts. 

Thus we find a training in the use of 
noun, adjective, verb, adverb, and preposi- 
tion. His language is enriched, also, by 
means of the stories related by the kiuder- 
gartner, and by the verses of song which he 
memorizes. 

I have heard a child quote lines from 
these songs while at play in the home or in 
the fields to express Ms thoughts, and not for 
the sake of quoting. 

For example, a little boy of four, as he 
ran about, the summer after he had entered 
a kindergarten, would suddenly exclaim, 

"Bnttercnps and daisies, 
Oh, the pretty flowers." 

Or, 

"Open your eyes. 
My pansies sweet," 

as he passed a bed of j)ansies. 

After saying '^ Twinkle, twinkle, little 
star," oue night, he asked, "Little star, did 
you know I called you a diamond?" 

When he wanted to call some one, he has 
said, 

" Beckon to the chickens small. 
Come, dear chickens, one and all," 

[Froebel's Mother Song] 



95 



or " Help, neighbors, help." This couplet 
was often quoted in the most pleasing tone, 
and with a most gracious manner. It was 
used to secure help. Another time he said, 
"'Give,' said the little stream — that's the 
same as ' Help me.' " 

In speaking of a dog, he said, " He is full 
of glee," the last three words being taken 
from a song. 

The kindergarten has always stood for the 
development of individuality in the pupil. 

This is shown by the small number of 
pupils usually allotted to one teacher. It is 
shown by the free work called for in con- 
nection with every gift and occupation. 

The children work in unison at times, and 
thus learn to attend to a leader's voice, to 
follow dictation ; but soon is heard the word, 
"Children, now you may make anything you 
please." Then the individual bent is followed 
and the teacher's time has come to study her 
pupils, and thus learn to treat them in ac- 
cordance with their individual tendencies. 

The all — important subject of "Individu- 
alism in Education " has been very ably 
treated recently' bj" Nathaniel A. Shaler, in 
the Atlantic Monthly* 

* Atlantic Monthly, May, 1S91. 



His snggcstious in relation to the necessity 
of sympathy between pnpil and teacher, in 
order to develop the individual tendencies 
of the child, are well carried out in the kin- 
dergarten. 

He says, "If we compare the intellectual 
movements of a child when he is with those 
whom he regards wnth affection, and wiien 
he is in contact with strangers, we see the 
nature of this diiference in action of the 
infantile mind." 

He closes with these words, ''There are 
doubtless many ways in which men may 
make a new heaven and a new earth of 
their dwelling-places, but the simplest of all 
ways is through a fond discerning and in- 
dividual care of each child." 

Such care is at least the aim of the true 
kiudergartuer. 



THE PHILOSOPHY OF THE KINDER- 
GARTEN. 

BY ANGELINe' brooks. 

Froebel, the founder of tlie kindergar- 
ten, announced as the basis of his system 
an educational law wbicli be called tbe law 
of unity. Tbe first cbapter of bis Educa- 
iion of Man entitled "Groundwork of tbe 
Wbole," opens witb tbese words : '■'■ In all 
tilings tbere lives and reigns an eternal 
law. . . . Tbis all-controlling law is necessa- 
rily based on all-pervading, energetic, liv- 
ing, self-conscious, and bence eternal. Unity. 
. . . Tbis Unity is God. All tbings bave 
come from tbe Divine Unity, from God, and 
bave tbeir origin in tbe Divine Unity, in 
God alone. God is tbe sole Source of all 
tbings. In all tbings tbere lives and reigns 
tbe Divine Unity, God." 

Froebel declared tbat it was tbe applica- 
tion of tbis eternal law, bere traced to its 
source, wbicb gave bim tbe rigbt to call bis 
metbod a system. He spoke of it under dif- 
7 



fereut terms, as the law of the coDiiection of 
opposites, the law of development, the law 
of balauce, the law of contrasts and their 
connections, as well as the law of unity, and 
declared that the whole meaning of his edu- 
cational scheme rested upon this law alone. 
Other great minds have recognized the op- 
eration of the same law, and it is towards 
the consideration of the underlying unity 
of all things that all modern thought tends, 
whether in the realm of religion, of science, 
or of philosophy. It is seen that all things 
are from God, that all things have rela- 
tion to man, and that therefore all must 
have relation to one another. Emerson gives 
expression to the satisfaction which the hu- 
man mind experiences in the contemplation 
of this truth when he says, " The day of 
days, the great day of the feast of life, is that 
in which the inward eye opens to the unity 
of things." 

An extended reference to the law of unity 
in its universal application is not pertinent 
to the purpose of this paper, but it is hoped 
that a correct apprehension of the idea in- 
volved in the term in its application to edu- 
cation may be gained by a brief considera- 
tion of the underlying principles of Froebel's 
philosophy. 



99 



The term education, as Froebel uses it, 
contains the central idea of his system ; for, 
recognizing "the identity of the cosmic laws 
with the laws of our mind," and seeing that 
the operations of natnre are always in order- 
ly evolutions, he defines education to be a 
process of development. This thought is 
contained in the word kindergarten (child- 
garden), for, as the wise gardener seeks to 
give each plant the best conditions for un- 
folding the divine thought which it contains, 
so the kindergarten demands for each hu- 
man being, created for freedom in the iraage^ 
of God, the opportunity to develop his in- 
born possibilities, spontaneously and freely, 
in accordance with the eternal law. The 
limiting, repressing, dwarfing methods of 
mere instruction, which prescribe for all 
alike, and which regard the human mind as 
merely a receptacle to be filled, have no 
place in the new education. Admitting that 
at j)resent the schools are far from making 
vital, in actual practice, the developing 
method, it is encouraging and inspiring to 
note that the tendency of the most advanced 
educational thought is in this direction. 

"The object of education," says Froebel, 
" is the realization of a faithful, pure, invio- 
late, and hence holy life." Enlarging upon 



tbis idea, he says: ''Edncatiou should lead 
and guide niau to a clearness couceruiug 
himself and iu himself, to peace with nat- 
ure, and to unity with God; hence it should 
lift him to a knowledge of himself and of 
mankind, to a knowledge of God and of nat- 
ure, and to the pure and holy life to which 
such knowledge leads." How far preseut 
educational methods are from attaining the 
results required by this standard our crimi- 
nal records, our juvenile asylums, our State 
prisons, and the general disorders of society 
testify. Such results can be reached only 
through that unification of life, everywhere 
spoken of in Froebel's writings, which in- 
volve all man's relationships — to God, to 
nature, and to humanity — and which neces- 
sitates the education of the whole human 
being — his head, his heart, and his hand — 
in uninterrupted continuity of development 
from the earliest infancy. 

The child is born to three relationships — 
to nature, to God, and to his fellow-man — 
each of which involves necessities, duties, 
and the possibilities of failure. He begins 
life at the bottom — at first has no possession 
of his bodily faculties, nor of his intellectual 
and spiritual powers. He needs education 
iu each of these directions. 



101 



Froebel liad in miud tliis comprehensive 
idea of the work to be done when he set him- 
self to develop a theory of education. The 
kindergarten he intended to be a practical 
school, in which the child should get physi- 
cal, moral, and spiritual culture. In the true 
kindergarten this threefold object is never 
lost sight of, for to neglect any side of it is 
to do less than Froebel's theory requires. He 
intended the kindergarten to be an epitome 
of life, in which the great world of grown- 
up people should be represented in minia- 
ture. " We learn by doing " was a favorite 
motto of his, and, true to his thought, he de- 
veloped a system through which the funda- 
mental principles of morality should be 
learned by actual experience. As a basis for 
this moral and spiritual culture, the physical 
well-being of the child is the object of con- 
stant attention. 

All the discords of society arise from man's 
ignorance of the way to adapt himself in 
just relations to his fellow-man, or, if not 
from his ignorance, from his unwillingness 
to do so. To train the child to the practice 
of honor and justice with children of his 
own age is to lay the foundation of a just 
and honorable character. To develop in him 
love for others and a willingness to sacrifice 



himself for them within proper limits, is the 
cliief object of the true kiudergarfciier. 

The kiudergarten takes the child from the 
nursery aud introduces him into a community 
of his equals, in which the usual collisions of 
child life are constantly occurring, in the 
adjustment of which he gets experience that 
has much to do with the formation of char- 
acter. 

He learns to respect the rights of others, 
and to be himself self-asserting when need 
requires. He is treated justly and tenderly, 
and learns to treat in the same way those 
younger or weaker than himself. 

That the child's relations with his fellows 
are important, and that there is need of 
guiding him in those relations, are ideas uot 
readily received by those who have thought 
of the intellect alone as requiring culture, at 
least in the schools. The prevailing idea 
has been and still is that the training of 
the intellect is the chief work of education. 
This is a serious mistake, for in moral and 
spiritual culture the will is especially iu- 
volved, and to strengthen the desire of right- 
willing is at least as Im^iortant as to increase 
the capacity to know. The kindergartner 
believes that to lead the child to love that 
which is good and true is more important than 



103 



to fill bis mind with stores of knowledge, for 
simply to know the right is not enough; he 
alone does the right who loves to do it. We 
are sorry if our neighbor is an ignorant man, 
we are still more sorry if be is an unamiable 
man. 

At the outset the kindergartner is con- 
fronted by the necessity of studying deeply 
the two great forces which lie back of every 
act of the child's life. He who would man- 
age a steam-engine must know what the 
motive power is and how to control it. 

Froebel, having set for himself so compre- 
hensive a task in education, saw that he 
must begin with the youngest children, with 
tlie babies, and before we can witness the 
fullest illustration of the value of his system, 
mothers and nurses must adopt its methods 
and be imbued with its spirit. Helpless in- 
fancy, without the power of resistance to 
either physical or spiritual evils, must be 
guarded tenderly, lest from wounds thus 
early received there remain life-long scars, 
and the seed-sowing from which shall spring 
the fruitage of future life must be done by 
judicious hands. 

The first seven years of the child's life 
Froebel saw to be the most important for pur- 
poses of education ; for, as he said, during 



tbat time tendencies are giv^en aQcl the germs 
of character are set. No impressions stop 
with the body : all enter the soul. A body 
untenanted by a soul receives no impres- 
sions. 

To direct the tendencies of mind and heart, 
to prepare the mind to love truth and good- 
ness, to lay broad and deep the foundations 
on Tvhich the future educator may build in 
beauty and strength — this is the -work of 
the mother and the kindergartner. The 
wisest parents are those who are quickest to 
see the tendencies of their children for good 
or for evil, and who are most judicious in 
using stimulus or ]ireventive, as the case 
may require. 

The kindergarten is the only institution 
except the family that seeks to educate 
children under school age; but the necessity 
of such early training in loving and doing 
the right is plainly shown by the fact that 
many children enter school with evil tenden- 
cies strongly developed and evil habits firm- 
ly fixed. There is a work, both of prevention 
and of up-building, which may be done be- 
fore school age, and the omission of which at 
that time can never be made up. It is un- 
wise to overlook the earliest seed-time. In 
these days, when so much is to be feared 



105 



from the ignorance and unbridled passions of 
the h)\vest classes of society, the kiudergar- 
teu offers itself as one most potent prevent- 
ive of the dreaded evils, and this chiefly 
because it, as no other means does, begins 
with the babies. 

On one occasion Froebel thus expressed 
himself in regard to the importance of the 
earliest education : 

" Every age of life has its own peculiar 
claims and needs in respect to nurture and 
educational assistance, appropriate to it 
alone ; what is lost to the nursling cannot be 
made good in later childhood, and so on. 
The child, and afterwards the youth, have 
other needs and make other demands than 
the nursling, which must be met at their 
proper ages — not earlier, not later. Losses 
which have taken place in the first stage of 
life, in which the heart-leaves — the germ- 
leaves of the whole being — unfold, are never 
made up. If I pierce the young leaf of the 
shoot of a plant with the finest needle, the 
prick forms a knot which grows with the 
leaf, T)ecomes harder and harder, and pre- 
vents it from obtaining its perfectly com- 
plete form. Something similar takes place 
after wounds which touch the tender germ 
of the human soul and injure the heart- 



106 



leaves of its beiug." At tins poiut, turning 
to his pupils who were present, he said, 
" Therefore, you must keep holy the being 
of the cbild; protect it from every rough 
and rude impressiou, from every touch of the 
vulgar A gesture, a look, a souud, is often 
sufficient to iuflict such wounds. The child's 
soul is more tender and vulnerable than the 
finest or tenderest plant. It would have 
been far different with humanity if every in- 
dividual in it had been i)rotected in that ten- 
derest age as befitted the human soul which 
holds within itself the divine spark. 

" The first impressions which a j'oung 
child receives are stronger and more lasting 
than those in later life, because that power 
of resistance is theu wanting wbich its later 
consciousness brings. As the thriving of 
the child's body depends in a great measure 
upon its breathing pure air, so the purity 
and morality of the soul depend partly on 
the impressions which the nursling and child 
receive. The careful nursing of the inner 
spiritual life must begin much earlier than 
the expression of it is possible, before its 
tender susceptibility is disturbed by outward 
influences. This tender susceptibility re- 
quires a tender handling, or it is in a certain 
sense choked, as if I should cover the grow- 



iug roots of this little plant I have here with 
sand. No development can be forced in nat- 
ure, still less in the human mind. With 
right care everything blossoms iu its own 
time. If I forcibly tear open this poppy- 
bud, its fine folded leaves may be seen, but 
the flower will not unfold ; it withers with- 
in. In the same manner many a child's soul, 
artilicially and violently broken into, will 
wither within, be despoiled, and at least will 
not bear the fruit it was destined to bring 
forth. 

" Now, what can "we do for the unfolding 
of these heart-leaves of life, which contain 
the whole future man, with all its future 
tendencies ? We must launch the child 
from its birth into the free and all-sided use 
of its powers. That is just the aim of these 
plays aud occupations which exercise the yet 
unseen powers of the nursling on every side. 
But we must not, as is often erroneously 
done, take care only of the bodily powers 
by exercising merely the senses and limbs, 
and then later, when the school period ar- 
rives, make the intellectual powers alone act ; 
but steadily, and during the whole period of 
childhood, body and mind should be exer- 
cised and cultivated together. The mind 
develops itself in and with the organs that 



are inseparably couuected with it in the 
eartbly life. Child's play streugtheus the 
powers both of the sonl and of the body, pro- 
vided we know how to make the first self- 
occupation of a child a freely active, that is, 
a creative or a productive one." 

Froebel may be called the " discoverer of 
childhood," because he has had the philo- 
sophic insight to trace back to tlieir begin- 
nings in infancy, the germ-period of life, all 
the universal traits of the fully developed 
man. Love of home, love of country, desire 
for possession, all the domestic, social, and 
religious instincts which enter into the char- 
acter of mankind have, according to him, 
their root in some manifestation of early 
childhood, and he declared that it is the 
duty of those who have the responsibility of 
the education of children to know the mean- 
ing of their first utterances, in which are 
seen the germs of the mature character, and 
to nourish and direct them as such. 

A striking illustration of this thought of 
Froebel's is found in the use of figurative lan- 
guage. We speak of warm hearts, glowing 
words, dark deeds, lofty purposes, deep in- 
sight, near friends, wounded hearts, cutting 
sarcasms, bitter reproaches, stinging re- 
proofs ; in fact, it is impossible to express 



109 



iutellectual and spiritual truth except by 
means of words derived from tbe qualities of 
things. 

Emerson says, " What men value as sub- 
stance has a greater vahie as symbol. The 
whole world is thoroughly anthropomor- 
phized, as though it had passed through tlie 
mind of man and taken his mould and form ; 
the huge heaAens and earth are but a web 
drawn around us ; the light, skies, and 
mountains are but the painted vicissitudes 
of the soul." 

The thought which Froebel everywhere 
expresses is that things of the sjiiritual 
world are related to things of the natural 
world by corresjiondence, and that things of 
the natural world are related to one another 
by analogy. Here we find the meaning of 
his often repeated words, unity of life. To 
him they were words full of important truth ; 
indeed, they furnished the key to liis whole 
system. 

To develop a system of education which 
should be in accordance with nature had 
made a thorough study of nature necessary, 
and with childlike docility Froebel had set 
himself to the task. As a result of his stud- 
ies in all departments of science he came to 
see an underlying unity in all tlie works of 



the visible creation, that each of tlie three 
great kiugdoins of nature is a whole, that 
each is related to the others, and that all 
find their consummation in man. In reaching 
this conclusion Froebel was but anticipating 
the work of modern scientists, for it is tow- 
ards the discovery of underlying unity that 
their vast researches tend. An English 
writer speaks of the " grand consanguinity 
of all knowledge arising from the unity of 
nature," and the same writer says, "No por- 
tion of nature is truly intelligible till its 
analogies with the other portions are inves- 
tigated and applied." In another x^lace he 
says, " The beginning of philosophy is the 
study of differences; but we climb to that 
beautiful Olympus where simple and essen- 
tial truths reside, the heaven of all the other 
spheres of knowledge, by comparing and de- 
ducing resemblances." 

The three kingdoms of nature stand in 
close relation to one another. Broadly, it 
may be said that plants feed upon minerals, 
and animals feed upon plants. Then, again, 
each kingdom prefigures the one above it. 
The mineral kingdom in some of its beauti- 
ful crystalline forms foretells the vegetable 
world. Silver and copper, for instance, in 
crystallizing often assume shapes striking- 



Ill 



ly suggestive of vegetable forms, and the 
frost-crj^stals of the wiudow-paue aud of the 
pavemeut are sometimes almost perfect re- 
productions of certain mosses aud ferns. 
Crystalline forms are also seen in the cell of 
the honey-bee and iu the hexagoual facets 
of the eyes of insects, and in innumerable 
other instances the connection between the 
different kiugdoms of nature is seen. 

So close is the analogy between the vege- 
table and animal kingdoms that, taken 
together, they may be said to form a whole. 
The respiratory and circulatory systems and 
the digestive organs of the human body 
have their analogues in plants. The mem- 
bers of both kiugdoms have their allotted 
periods of growth and of maturity, aud both 
are subject to the law of death and decay. 

The underlying unity of all plant life is 
now fully recognized, and all the marvellous 
varieties of vegetable growths are reduced 
to root, stem, and leaves. Indeed, the leaf 
itself may be taken as the plant unit, to 
which root aud stem are but accessaries. 
Goethe first suggested this theory, and 
science now fully confirms it. 

The animal kingdom, like the vegetable, 
is a grand whole, for between the most mi- 
croscopic animalcule aud the largest quad- 



rnped there is no essential dififereuce as to 
structure aud modes of life. 

It is because man is thus related to nature 
that he can understand nature and can be 
educated through nature ; indeed, the study 
of the three kingdoms of nature is the best 
preparation that man can make for the un- 
derstanding of his own life, since in nature 
man sees himself reflected as in a mirror. 

In developing his edncatioual system, 
Froebel at every step of the way looked to 
nature for guidance. In speaking of direct- 
ing the child in his attempts at creative ac- 
tivity, he says, '' Where shall we take the 
rule, if not from nature f We mortals can 
only imitate Avhat the dear God has created : 
therefore ive 7nust malce use of the same law 
according io wJiicli He creates. With this 
law I give children a guide for creating, and, 
because it is the law accordiug to which 
they, as creatures of God, have themselves 
been created, thej^ can easily apply it. It is 
born with them, and it also guides the ani- 
mal instinct in its activity." 

Illustrations of the ox^eration of the law 
of unity, obvious to the most careless observ- 
er, abound everywhere, while the searcher 
after nature's secrets finds the same law 
working in all her most hidden processes. 



113 



It is the balancing of centrifugal and cen- 
tripetal forces that keeps the heavenly bodies 
in their unvarying paths; it is the united 
action of the heat and liglit of the sun that 
gives life and fertility to the earth ; it is by 
the balancing of waste and repair through 
the wonder-working chemistry of nature that 
the ever-returning wants of the vegetable 
and animal world are supplied, and the face 
of the earth renewed continually. The dis- 
integration of all material things w^ould re- 
sult should the action of tlie law of unity be 
for one moment suspended. 

The law of unity underlies all fornuition 
in the w^orks of nature and all construction 
in the works of man. The bird builds its 
nest in obedience to it, bringing together 
scattered sticks and straws and weaving them 
into a whole, and man makes a dwelling for 
himself by bringing together and subjecting 
to one unifying thought and purpose, through 
the skilled labor of unnumbered hands, the 
products of the quarry, the mine, and the 
forest. The arch illustrates the law we are 
considering. It derives its unity from the 
key-stone, which enters as a wedge and con- 
nects the opposite parts. The truss of ar- 
chitecture is another illustration of the same 
law, its use, like that of the key-stone, being 



based npou the fact that ^' action and reac- 
tion in opposite directions are equal." 

All the industries and arts are only appli- 
cations of tlie Jaiv of' unity. The farmer by 
his activities puts in operation the chain of 
causes that must intervene between the seed 
and the harvest. The manufacturer and 
the merchant bridge the gap between the 
producer and the consumer, and ships and 
railroads, telegraphs and telephones, unite 
X^laces and peoples that would otherwise be 
separated. Terrible famines have recently 
devastated some parts of India because there 
Avas no available means by which food from 
the overflowing granaries of the Western 
World could be carried to the starving mill- 
ions of the East. Nothing is of any value 
so long as it exists in isolation, and nothing 
is fully understood until its relations to all 
other things are seen. 

To apply in education the law of unity had 
been FroebeFs thought long before he con- 
ceived the idea of the kindergarten. In 
The Education of Man, written nearly ten 
years before the opening of the first kinder- 
garten, it is constantly referred to as the one 
guiding law in education. In one place he 
says, "Nothing whatever is truly known 
unless it is compared with the opposite of 



its kind, and the points of agreement and 
resemblance detected; and knowledge is 
complete in proportion to the thoronghuess 
of the process of comparison and discovery." 
Again he says, " Never forget this : It is not 
by teaching and imparting a mere variety 
and mnltitnde of fiicts that a school becomes 
a school (in the trne sense), bnt only by em- 
phasising thelivinf/ unity thai is in all things" 
Froebel thns states his idea of what the 
school should be: "School is the effort to 
acquaint the pupil with the trne nature and 
inner life of things, and to bring him to a 
consciousness of his own inner life and nat- 
ure; to acquaint him with the real relation 
of things to each other, and also to mankind, 
to the pupil himself, and to the living ground 
and self-conscious unity of all things, i.e., 
God; so that these relations maybe a living 
reality to his consciousness. The aim of 
instruction is to give the pupil an insight 
into the unity of all things, how they live, 
move, and have their being in God, for the 
purpose of applying this insight to practical 
life and work ; the method and means to 
this end is instruction, the verj^ process of 
teaching." He defines the school-master as 
" one who is in a i^osition to demonstrate 
the nnity of things." 



116 



That the way pointed out by Froebel is 
the natural and, therefore, the right way of 
presenting subjects, is shown by the delight 
with which children work in accordance 
with it. Related opposites being given, 
the child will look with the greatest inter- 
est for the intervening links that connect 
them. He will go at once, from things that 
he sees and handles, to God, the Cause of all, 
and then will ask with eagerness to be 
shown by what means the Cause has pro- 
duced the effect. 

Froebel took a comprehensive view of this 
subject when he said, " What other objects of 
our knowledge exist but God, man, nature ? 
What other task can our intellect have than 
to find the relation between these three sole- 
existing objects ?" 

God, the Self-existing, expresses Himself 
in unconscious nature. Man stands between 
God and nature. For man nature exists, 
and through the knowledge and use of nat- 
ure man is led up to God ; for, as Froebel said, 
" Creation is the embodied thought of God." 

The Baroness Marenholz says, "By-and- 
by Froebel's educational law will be accepted 
as distinctlj^ and independently as Newton's 
law of gravitation." When that time comes, 
things and events will be presented to the 



117 



pupil in their natural counections ; history 
will not be taught as a mere patchwork of 
battle-scenes, and scientific study will be 
something more than the collectiug of dis- 
connected facts. 

Froebel's deep thought of education was 
that it should be the means of showing to 
each individual his own possibilities. To 
accomplish this there must be freedom of 
activity ; for by no other means can indi- 
vidual ity be developed. No external mould- 
ing of the mind after a given pattern will 
do: that is the Chinese idea of education. 
Froebel more than any other educator has 
insisted upon this necessity of spontaneous 
activity as a means of development, and he 
has devised a system that has made it pos- 
sible. As a first step towards securing this 
freedom of activity, he would rouse in the 
child a desire to know ; for as we may gauge 
the health of the body by the keenness of 
the appetite for food, so the healthy mind 
may be known by that " curiosity which is 
the appetite of the understanding." The 
constant effort of the kindergartner is to 
induce children to use their eyes and ears, 
and to lead them to seek for the causes that 
lie back of the phenomena which come 
within their observation. In orderly de- 



118 



velopment the next step will be the desire 
to give expression to the ideas that have 
been received. Use is the law of increase in 
intellectual as it is in physical strength, and 
Froebel's system is shown to be in accord- 
ance with nature in the fact that giving as 
well as receiving, doing as well as knowing, 
are constantly insisted upon. If sponta- 
neous activity is not the result of the child's 
training, there is somewhere a fatal defect. 
If the child of the kindergarten, treated ten- 
derly and lovingly, justly and with respect, 
does not learn to show to his fellows tender- 
ness and love, justice and respect — if, having 
had an opportunity through the use of the 
gifts to gain clear ideas of external things, 
he never becomes inventive in the use of the 
occupation-materials, and his work is always 
only that which he is told to do — the great 
object of his training has not been accom- 
plished, for " the end and aim of the kinder- 
garten is harmonious development leading 
to spontaneous activity." 

The test of the true kindergarten is al- 
ways the joyous spontaneity of the children 
in their games and their inventiveness in 
the use of the gifts and the occupations. 

Froebel said, " Only that knowledge fur- 
thers the ripening of the mind which mounts 



up through its own activity and effort from 
the perception and contemplation of external 
objects to the thoughts or the conceptions that 
dwell in things." 

All the activity of the kindergarten is 
easily roused, because everything is done in 
accordance with the child's natural activity 
— that is, in the play -spirit. It is not 
merely in the games of the kindergarten 
that the children play. The games are the 
Inlays, but the children play in all they do. 
If they march, they are playing soldiers,* 
if they build ^Yith the gifts, they are playing 
at building; if they work at weaving, or 
sewing, or paper-cutting, they are playing 
that they are working. There are no tasks 
in the kindergarten. Froebel saw in the 
child's play the thought of God for him as 
to the means of development suited to this 
stage of his growth. 

In that chapter of The Education of Man 
ill which he treats of man in the period 
of his earliest childhood, he says, " Play is 
the highest stage of a child's development, 
of man's development at that period ; for it 
is the spontaneous utterance of the inner 
life, flowing from an inner necessity and 
impulse. Play is the purest and most spir- 
itual product of man's activity at this j)eriod, 



and is at once the type and image of human 
life in its entire range, of the secret life that 
flows through mankind and nature ; hence 
it gives biith to joy, freedom, contentment, 
tranquillity, and peace with the world. In 
it are the springs of all good ; the child that 
plays sturdily and with quiet enei-gy, hold- 
ing out to the point of bodily fatigue, will 
surely become a sturdy, quiet, and steadfast 
man, promoting with self-sacrifice his own 
and others' welfare. Is not the playing 
child the most beautiful sight at this period 
of life? — the child fully absorbed in his 
play — falling asleep while thus absorbed? 

" Play, as above indicated, is at this period 
no mere sport, it is deeply serious and signif- 
icant. Cherish and nourish it, j^ou who are 
mothers ; protect and guard it, you fathers. 
The penetrating eye of one thoroughly ac- 
quainted with human nature plainly dis- 
cerns in the spontaneously chosen play of 
the child his future inner history. The 
plays of this period are the germs of the en- 
tire future life, for in them the whole nature 
of the child is expanding, and showing his 
finest traits, his inmost soul. In this period 
lie the springs of the entire course of human 
life, and upon the proper conduct of life now 
will it depend whether the future is to be 



121 



clear or clouded, geutle or boisterous, calm 
or agitated, industrious or idle, gloomy and 
morbid or bright and productive, obtuse or 
keenly receptive, creative or destructive; 
whether it is to bring concord and peace or 
discord and war; on that, too, depend like- 
wise, in keeping with the peculiar natural 
constitution of the child, his relations to 
father and mother, brothers and sisters, to 
the community and the race, to nature and 
to God." 

Children, whether in school or out of it, 
love to work if they are playing that tJiey are 
working. The story of a man who by this 
means cleared a piece of ground of stones 
illustrates this. Wishing to remove the 
stones which Avere thickly strewn all over 
the ground, he told the boys of the neigh- 
borhood that on a given day he would help 
them build a stone fort. Delighted, as chil- 
dien alwaj^s are, to play under the direction 
of an older person, they came eagerly, with 
little express - wagons and wheelbarrows, 
and carried all the stones to one corner of 
the field, where they were skilfully piled up 
to make a fort. The boys had a day of fun, 
and they accomplished for their frieud a 
piece of work which it would have been 
cruelty to ask them to do in any other way. 



The practical carrying out of Froebel's 
theory makes the constant nse of the hands 
necessary. Here he has shown himself to be 
in harmony with nature's plan, for children 
always love to have something to do. In a 
well-conducted kindergarten the children 
are never listless ; for their attention is al- 
ways held by connecting all instruction with 
the use of the hands. They are not bur- 
dened by being taught dry abstractions ; 
they '' learn by doing," and the hand, man's 
distinguishing implement of power, is made 
a chief means of education. By the use of it 
the inner thought and purpose find outward 
expression, and, by being thus expressed, 
reveal the child's possibilities to himself. 
It is with feelings of self-respect and a 
sense of dignity and importance that he 
looks upon the work of his own hands. He 
can do something well, and he feels that he 
lias earned his right to a place in the world. 
All experience shows that if special skill in 
the use of the hands is desired, the muscles 
must be trained in early childhood ; and it 
is partly because the kindergarten gives 
employment to the tiny hands of the very 
little children that its industries are so 
valuable. 

In all reformatory institutions the impor- 



tance of tlie training of the hand as a means 
of moral culture is acknowledged. Statistics 
show that penal and reformatory institu- 
tions are largely filled by tliose who have 
no special aptitude for any useful work. 
Mr. Dugdale, in his book upon crime and 
pauperism, says that if the children of vice 
and crime, born with the lowest tendencies, 
could be from their earliest childhood trained 
in Froebel's methods, these tendencies might 
be to a great extent overcome. This state- 
ment is easily accepted by those who see 
the delight which the children of the kin- 
dergarten take in their employments, and 
esiiecially by those who see how the dullest 
and most refractory are made eager and 
docile when given work to do suited to their 
tastes and capacities. 

The activity of play gives the freest scope 
to the imagination, and one very important 
part of the kindergartner's work is to guide 
and educate this " kingly faculty of the 
soul." One of the greatest of living preachers 
says, "To fill the mind with beautiful im- 
ages is the best mode of culture for the very 
young. Make sure of the imagination, and 
you secure the character." The kinder- 
gartner recognizes this truth, and for this 
reason seeks as far as possible to surround 



124 



the children with beautiful objects, and at- 
tempts constantly in the games and songs, 
the talks and stories, and by every other 
possible means, to waken such thoughts and 
feelings as shall elevate and refine. It is in 
these opportunities for seed-sowing that the 
true kindergartner finds her greatest satis- 
faction. 

No language can be too strong to express 
the emphasis which Froebel places upon the 
need of religious education. In one place 
he says, "All education which is not found- 
ed npou the Ciiristian religion is one-sided, 
defective, and fruitless;" again, he says, 
'' The object and end of all education is the 
union of the individual soul with God." 
This idea is pervasive of all his writings ; it 
is the central thought of the whole. 

Recognizing the interdependence of differ- 
ent planes of spiritual activity, Froebel sees 
social education to be essential to true relig- 
ious culture. In fact, he traces the religious 
and the social instinct to the same source, 
and finds in the child's love of companion- 
ship — in his desire to find some being in 
loving response to himself — the germ of all 
religious feeling. A guiding thought in 
Froebel's philosophy is the idea of the or- 
ganic relation of the individual to the race. 



125 



He says: "lu tlie development of the intli- 
Tidnal man the history of the spiritual de- 
velopment of the race is repeated, and the 
race in its totality may he viewed as one 
human heing, in whom there will he found 
the necessary steps in the development of 
individual man." That humanity is a living 
organism, whose memhers are vitally related 
to one another, is acknowledged in common 
language in such expressions as "the body 
of the people," "the popular voice," "com- 
mon consent ;" and the analogy between 
the development of the race and that of the 
individual is recognized in such terms as 
" the infancy of the race," " this age of the 
world," "the development of humanity." 
That the human being needs practical so- 
cial education is shown by the discords 
which result from violations of the laws 
governing human society. The first social 
life of the child is that of the family, which 
Froebel would have cherished and fostered 
most tenderly; but at an early age there 
comes the necessity for a wider companion- 
ship than the home circle affords, and the 
kindergarten, which is pre-eminently a place' 
of social education, offers itself to meet the 
needs of this important stage of develop- 
ment. Edward Everett Hale says, "The 



great itlea of the present century is the 
togetherness of the human race." 

Considering man in his relation to nat- 
ure, the first and most obvious thought is 
that of his body, which, formed of the ele- 
ments of the material world, is- subject to 
the same chemical laws, and upon whose 
healthy condition right living on the higher 
planes of thought and affection so largely 
depends ; but a deeper thought than this 
underlies the expressions " a knowledge of 
nature," "peace with nature," which Froebel 
includes in his statement of the object of 
education, quoted above. In nature he sees 
the "embodied thoughts of God," and it is 
to nature as a book of God that he would 
lead the child. The interpretation of the 
book of nature he finds in its symbolisms of 
spiritual truth. His words are, "All natural 
phenomena are signs of spiritual truth to 
which they give expression ; thus they may 
be called symbols." In this correspondence 
between spiritual truth and its natural sym- 
bol Froebel sees a grand illustration of the 
law of unity, and most earnestly he urges 
upon educators the obligation to apply it. 
He says: "It is quite a different thing 
whether we look upon concrete things and 
facts as merely material things aud facts, 



127 



serving tbis or that outward purpose, or 
contemplate them as the outward forms of 
spiritual contents, the intermedia of higher 
truths and higher knowledge. In this sense 
the material world is a symbol of the spirit- 
ual world, and it is in this sense that educa- 
tion needs to use it, especially in leading the 
child to the ultimate cause of all things — 
God." In the technical kindergarten gifts 
and occupations Froehel presents what may 
be called a primer of the book of nature. 
These gifts and occupations he bases upou 
three typical forms — the sphere, the cube, 
and the cylinder — in which he sees the 
whole material universe epitomized and 
symbolized. These three forms taken to- 
gether embody the law of unity, and in their 
use in the true kindergarten that law is al- 
ways observed, in sequences of thought and 
of work. 

Hitherto school education has been one- 
sided, confining itself chiefly to the intellect, 
and making little provision for the cultiva- 
tion of the heart or the training of the hand. 
In fact, although claiming to give attention 
to good morals, the schools, in their systems 
of marks and distinctions, have had a pow- 
erful influence in exactly the opposite direc- 
tion, fostering untruthfulness, self-seeking. 



jealous}^, aud disbouesty iu its worst forms, 
aud teudiug to defeat eveu the one end chief- 
ly souglit; for the painstaking but slow 
child, seeing the honors of the school be- 
stowed upon his more gifted but possibly 
less faithful companion, becomes discour- 
aged and indifferent, while the prize pupil, 
who has worked, not in joy and freedom, 
from the love of knowledge, but, as he un- 
blushingly confesses, for marks, is thereby 
dwarfed aud crippled intellectually as well 
as morally. 

Against the self-seeking system of the 
schools the kindergarten protests in the 
most practical manner, for all its methods 
are adapted to develop feelings of kindness, 
of helpfulness, of sympathy with and of re- 
spect for others. No one is encouraged to 
do better than another, but each is stimu- 
lated to do his best. Right feeling is neces- 
sary for true thinking; it is only when the 
heart is joyous that the intellect does its 
best work. The child depressed by discour- 
agement, burdened with fear, wounded by 
injustice, or hungry for love, does not thrive 
either intellectually or morally, and the first 
aim of the kindergarten is to see that he is 
happy. 

But right feelings, without means of ex- 



129 



pression, are mere sentiments; they must 
take definite and tangible shape before they 
can be of any value, either to the subject of 
them or to another*, and the crowning ex- 
cellence of Froebel's system — that which 
gives it practical value — is found in its in- 
dustries and activities, its manual work and 
representative play, through which, by act- 
ual doing, the loving thought is expressed. 
One application of the law of unity is seen 
in the fact that the industries of the kinder- 
garten are the industries of the race in min- 
iature — working in clay, building, weaving, 
sewing, etc, — all leading out into the life 
of the world. But it is not from considera- 
tion of their use in the activities of practi- 
cal life, important as these may be, that 
Froebel lays such emphasis upon the indus- 
tries of the child. He sees that man in his 
best development is necessarily a creative 
being, and he urges a higher application of 
the law of unity in the reasons which he 
gives for the encouragement of creative ac- 
tivity. He says: ''The Spirit ofGod hov- 
ered over chaos, and moved it; and stones 
and plants, beasts and man, took form and 
separate being and life. God created man 
in his own image; therefore man should 
create and bring forth like God. His spirit. 



130 



the spirit of mau, should hover over the 
shapeless, and move it, that it may take 
shape aud form, a distiuct being and life of 
its own. This is the high meaning, the deep 
significauce, the great purpose of work and 
industry, of productive and creative activ- 
ity." 

It is only through doing that the human 
being can be developed — can realize his 
own possibilities — can be himself; and he 
must see himself objectively in some prod- 
uct of his own activity before he can know 
himself. With what feelings of satisfaction 
and self- respect, with what a sense of his 
own dignity and importance, the little child 
of the kindergarten exclaims, as he holds 
up some finished piece of work, ''See what 
I have made! I did it all myself!'* 

The seed sown b}' Froebel more than six- 
ty years ago is bearing fruit. Character- 
building the end of education, and the train- 
ing of the hand an indispensable means to 
that end, are two thoughts now iiromineutly 
before our leading educators. 

In regard to the training of the hand, the 
question of the schools now is not " Shall 
we encourage it?" but "What industries 
can be introduced, aud in what way ?" 

The most difficult part of the problem — 



131 



that of providing work suitable for the 
youngest children — was solved by Froebel 
himself. It is left for his followers to de- 
vise occupations adapted to the schools and 
suited to the needs of our times. 

A recognition of tlie importance of infan- 
cy for educational purposes is one of the pe- 
culiar features of Froebel's system. "Life," 
he says, " is one continuous whole, and all 
the stages of development are but links in 
the great chain of existence ; and since noth- 
ing is stronger than its weakest part, it is 
essential that the first link, babyhood, be 
made firm enough to bear the strain of fut- 
ure life." Practical as he always is, Froebel 
shows in The Mother Play and Nursery 
Songs — a book worthy of the most careful 
study of all mothers — how this first link in 
the chain of life may be strengthened. Two 
thoughts, each involving the idea of unity, 
furnish the key to this book ; they are, the 
relation of the germ stage of life to all other 
stages, and the symbolism of material things. 

It is through the activity of play — the 
only activity in which the child is free and 
joyous — that the ends sought in the kinder- 
garten are attained, and the school finds 
work made easy when it is done in the i)lay 
spirit. 



132 



III his motto, " Come, let ns live with our 
children," Froehel urges the fostering of a 
sympathetic union between parent and child. 

The importance and the sacredness of such 
relationship he expresses in these words : 

"For thyself in all thy works take care 
That every act the highest meaning bear; 
Wonld'st thou unite the child for aye with thee, 
Then let him with the Highest One thy union see. 
Believe that by the good that's in thy mind 
Thy child to good will early be inclined; 
By every noble thought with wiiich thy heart is 

fired 
The child's young soul will surely be inspired; 
And can'st thou any better gift bestow 
Than union with the Eternal One to know?" 



AN EXPLANATION OF THE KINDER- 
GARTEN, INTENDED FOR MOTHERS. 

BY AOCE A. CHADWICK.* 

If to fight its way were the only proof 
Deeded of a good thing, then the kinder- 
garten lias j)roved itself. It seems a marvel 
at first sight that this system has gained 
gronnd so slowly in America. We call our- 
selves progressive; we feel our common peo- 
ple in thought-power to be more than abreast 
of those of other nations; we are especially 
proud of our educational advantages, and 
the foundation principle of the kindergarten 
— liberty under law — is the corner-stone of 
our civil government. How, then, shall we 
account for the lack of assimilation ? 

In the first place, the kindergarten made 
its entrance among us as " Hamlet, with 
Hamlet left out." Miss Peabody, to whose 
philanthropic courage and persistence we 

* Written in April, 1890, in aid of a proposed kinder- 
garten movement in Jamaica, L. I. 



134 



owe the introduction of the system into onr 
country, during her first observation of it 
in Geriuanj^, caught some of the mechanism 
and ideas without the spirit and controlling 
laws. Thus presented, the scheme lacked 
balance; in fact, became no scheme at all, 
but a mere collection of rather interesting 
novelties among educational ideas. No 
one felt this with keener regret than Miss 
Peabody herself. She describes her first 
kindergarten as "a presumptuous attempt" 
— as "only the old primary-school amelio- 
rated by a mixture of infant-school plays." 
The result, all over the country, was a wave 
of so-called object-teaching which produced 
a set of precocious little prigs, more painful 
to our good American common-sense than 
the veriest dullard ever salted and put down 
for use by the old system. I have often 
heard a child of five or six years go through 
a formula something like the following: 

" I hold in my hand an object. It is 
spherical ; it has a circumference or periph- 
ery and a diameter; its circumference is 
3.1416 times its diameter. Its diameter is a 
right line passing through its centre and 
terminating in opposite points of its circum- 
ference." And so on through all its quali- 
ties of surface, density, opaqueness, etc., in 



the largest terms furQislied bj' a scientific 
nomenclature. And admiring friends have 
raised hands and eyes, exclaimiog, " Won- 
derful !" And so it was — wonderful tom- 
foolery! as wretched as any other mere 
memory lesson. The kindergarten child 
says " Ball " — like any other child. 

lu the second place, probably we were so 
soundly set in the notion that everything 
American — and particularly everything edu- 
cational in America — was of such superior 
character that to import an improvement 
from Germany verged, at least, upon the 
ridiculous. We forgot that the philosophies 
nested in Germany (and the secret of the 
kindergarten is its philosophy), the arts 
and sciences in France ; and when the Cen- 
tennial exhibits from Spain, Sweden, and 
other countries opened to us new revelations 
of methods and appliances, our admiration 
was tempered with indifference or incredu- 
lity. 

In the third place, the mere tools of edu- 
cation have come to stand for its soul. Try 
to conquer it as we may, the old-time super- 
stition haunts our blood — that all the world 
of knowledge is in a book — all the world of 
action in a pen ; and the backbone of oppo- 
sition to the kindergarten lies in the fact 



136 



that, up to the age of six or seven, the child 
is not taught reading and writing. 

In the fourth phice, it was noticed that 
kindergarten children, after promotion to 
the primary grade, did poor work. Then 
where was the boasted developing power of 
the kindergarten ? The child could not 
safely pass out of a system in which order 
means rhythmical movement into a sysfcni 
in which order means rigidity — therefore 
the system which allowed movement was at 
fault. 

All these obstacles were overcome. Miss 
Peahody visited Germany again, and brought 
back the spirit to put with her materials. 
America has developed modesty in connec- 
tion with the knowledge that she does not 
possess a single university, except in name, 
and that most of her colleges are little more 
than high-schools, the national passion for 
unearned titles having attacked institutions 
as well as individuals. 

As to the third objection, it has been found 
that the kindergarten child at seven learns 
in two mouths to read and write as well as 
his compeers in the old primarj'^, has wasted 
no energy upon dead material, and is at 
home in all the world beside. And as to the 
fourth, educators have begun to realize that 



la? 



a flower which has laughed in the sunshine 
and nodded its head to the wind canuot be 
suddenly taken up by its roots, put in a 
pot, and set in a row with seventy -three 
other little pots (I believe the average of 
tlie public school primary in Brooklyn has 
been reduced to seventy-three) without visi- 
bly drooping, and losing for .1 long time 
both leaf and l)lossom. So, at the present 
time in the best schools, the kindergarten 
spirit reaches up through all the primaries; 
and great hearts and bright minds are work- 
ing that the sun may shine and the breeze 
blow even through the academic department. 
But, when all these difficulties were put 
out of the way, the last enemy was worse 
than them all. No o[)position, honest or 
dishonest, ever hurt the kindergarten so 
much as the raft of, perhaps conscientious, 
but certainly misguided young women who, 
with very superficijil knowhsdge, set up small 
fancy-work establishments and called them 
kindergartens. These have done the system 
irremediable harm. These are responsible 
for the misconceptions in the minds of par- 
ents which, once rooted, are extremely diffi- 
cult to remove. I can but believe that this 
obstacle, too, will finally disappear before 
the jpersistence of inteUigcnt mothers. 



But, while we talk of objections, to what 
are the objections made ? What is this kin- 
dergarten ? 

I have heard many definitions. Some say 
it is a play-school. Well, there is nothing 
wrong about this definition. It is ouly in- 
complete. Others say it is a pleasant nurs- 
ery arrangement, by which mothers who are 
tired of their children may dispose of them 
for three hours each day. The most con- 
spicuous deficiency of this definition is the 
wholesale disposition of the mothers. What 
of those who dismiss the maid, and add 
house-work to their many cares, that they 
may be able to pay tuition ? or of those who 
undertake outside work to earn money for 
the same purpose ? What of those who take 
the children to school, stay with them, and 
bring them home, in cases where the school 
is too far from the home for the child to 
travel alone ? And what of those who, un- 
able to find a kindergarten near, spend time 
and means to study the system that they 
may give their children some of its benefits 
at home ? 

The most comprehensive definition I have 
ever heard is that given by an acquaintance 
of my own, a gentleman of some culture and 
very decided opinions. He calls it a hum- 



139 



bug! Cousidering the iiumLer of people of 
noble character and advanced intelligence 
who advocate the system, this gentleman 
assumes for himself a very high standard of 
criticism. I feel compelled to state that his 
opinion is of that high and abstract order 
which does not require local proof — he has 
never entered a kindergarteu. 

In J) resuming myself to oifer a definition, 
I recall that systematized thought runs 
along two parallel lines — the natural and 
the conventional. The kindergarten, then, 
is that scheme of education which reduces 
the evolution of child- nature to conven- 
tional form, and makes it an applied sci- 
ence, to stand beside and co-operate with 
the natural expression of child-nature in the 
home. 

But what is a child ? 

He is a living, moving being — intensely 
alive, and often unspeakably moving ! 

What hashed 

He has will-power. He loves to choose his 
own way. 

He has tlionght-power. He thinks of every- 
thing in the heaven above and in the earth 
beneath ; and the child does not live who, 
if refused healthy food for thought, will not 
find some food somewhere. 



He has lieart-power. He loves, or is very 
liiiiigry to love. 

He lias hody-power. He runs and leaps and 
tumbles and swings and pulls and strains 
and shouts from morning till niglit. 

He has moral-power. His instinct of right 
and wrong is keen, and his desire for the 
right is earnest and eager. No ordinarily 
normal child ever desires of himself to do 
wrong ; when he does, it is because we make 
him. 

What does he ? 

He ohserves. He w-atches nature from the 
ground to the sky; all life, animal or vege- 
table, is subject to his keen scrutiny ; he 
holds the mineral kingdom in his hands j 
and the inner world of our thought is not 
hid from him, for he sees straight into the 
heart of the man or woman who pretends to 
be wise in his presence. 

He investigates. He pokes and pries and 
questions and searches, and if need be to 
climb a tree, or slip down into a gully, or 
crawl under a steam-engine, nor height nor 
depth nor anything between shall hinder 
him. 

And he plays. 

He plays untiringly ; and in his play two 
elements preponderate — the exercise of the 



141 



analytic and synthetic faculties, or games 
of construction, aud of the dramatic faculty, 
or games of imitation. 

Very well then, what does the kiudergar- 
teu do for this child ? In the first place, it 
keeps him alive and keeps him moving. His 
natural, healthy, God-given activity is not 
confined within the cells of an artificial edu- 
cational scheme, which is a sort of progressive 
prison system, but every faculty of mind 
and body is given free play through a thou- 
sand avenues of expression. Are his dear 
eyes, through which the eager soul questions 
and will not down, pinned to a book to find 
out that " The— sun— has— risen ?" No ! He 
raises eyes aud arms aud soul, aud sings : 

"Good-morning, merry sunshine!" 

And through the hapi>y circle, and round 
the busy table, he learns his kinship with 
all the life aud motion in the great, wide 
world. 

It educates his icill; gives him gradual 
power in choosing his own way. Here comes 
in that marvellous principle of Froebel's 
which he calls self-activity, and which I un- 
derstand to mean the development of the 
child from within aud of his oicn ivilling, 



142 



traiuing him to take steps iu all directions 
of himself, rather thau in obedieuce to com- 
mands from without. This development of 
iutelligeut free-will is the finest foundation 
in boy or girl for good American citizenship. 
It develops normally his tliougM-poicer. 
He is not asked to grasp anything which 
is unintelligible to him, and which has, 
therefore, no "think" in it. He stores men- 
tal food, not as a barn stores hay, but as his 
stomach stores nutrition, with gradual as- 
similation. He is allowed to look, to listen, 
to touch, to smell, to taste to his heart's con- 
tent, and is not asked to formulate his 
thought until it lias rounded itself out of 
his own perceptions. He is never asked to 
make bricks without straw. Thus clear con- 
ception is stimulated through exact percep- 
tion ; and in the continual experience of the 
relation of cause and effect, sure foundations 
are laid for that logical power which is the 
crown of all mentality, and for that rever- 
ence for and obedience to law which comes 
only from the habitual sense of its divinity 
and immutability. 

It gives him the calmness of a satisfied 
heart. His emotional nature is tuned suc- 
cessively in all keys of home-love, affections 
of kinship and companionship, up to the de- 



143 



vout worsliip-love. The little sougs range 
from the "Mother good aud dear," along 
" Teachers aud all dear compauious," up to 
the Great Father — 

"... whoge love alone 
Thy little one doth keep." 

I know of nothing which embodies the soul 
of adoration more than the song of the lilies 
opening their cups to the golden sun. To 
see the sweet baby hands held together cup- 
shaped, softly uplifted and opened, while the 
earnest eyes look upward and the dear im- 
perfect voices follow the melody as best they 
may, some with bird - like clearness, some 
with precious brokenness and failing — to 
see this is to shed tears which come from 
whence — who knows! perhaps "from the 
depth of some divine despair," for who shall 
not despair of seeing the eternity which lies 
in these simple things ? 

It uses his restless dody, from the," little 
men" who "dance and sing" (the fingers) 
to the legs which imitate the spring of a 
frog. His fingers follow his thought and 
construct untiringly ; and, by the continued 
orderly taking apart and putting together 
of material, destructiveness and constructive- 
ness, analysis aud synthesis, are educated. 



144 



The develojpment of moral power is iu- 
teuded to iiudeiiie every part of kiudergarten 
work. Not only is the atmosphere of the 
school-room free from auy trace of suspicion 
or distrust — not only are pictures of love, 
truth, aud nobility continually held before 
the child's mind— not only is individual in- 
dependence united with mutual helpfulness 
— not only are effects shown to be related to 
causes — but every line drawn nearer straight- 
ness, every circle curved more completely^ 
every block placed more exactly, every color 
defined more distinctly, every flower named 
from its odor, every sound heard more cor- 
rectly, is an advance in physical rectitude 
which is considered to bear a direct relation 
to morality. 

His ohserration is trained to keenness 
through the natural channels which lie close 
to him, and everything dear to him, from the 
bird which flies and the fish which swims 
to the insects which creep and crawl, all 
avenues of art and literature, and particu- 
larly the noble world of common industry 
— all these hold open doors to his percep- 
tions. 

It encourages him in mvcsiUjation. Infor- 
mation is never put into him ; but he stands 
towards all knowledge in the attitude of a 



discoverer. So, "whatever he acquires is 
charged with the vitality of individnal ef- 
fort aloDg the Hue of original investir/ation. 

Aud — hej^^ttjis. Yes, let us say it frankly 
and fearlessl.y to those who accuse aud scorn, 
he plays with body aud heart and soul. The 
absorbing passion of his nature is gratified 
to the full ; his AA'ork is happy plaj^ ; his 
play is happy work ; aud this is the crowu 
of the system — happiness in activity. 

Through what means does the kindergar- 
ten accomplish these ends ? 

Through tive agencies — Songs, Stories, 
Gifts, Occupations, aud Games. 

The songs form the basis of the natural 
sciences, and inspire a reverence for nature, 
human life, and the Author of life. 

The stories develop imagination, the his- 
toric taste, aud the recognition of law in the 
unseen. 

The gifts — balls, cubes, sticks, rings, peas, 
etc. — form the basis of art and mathematics. 

The occupations — perforating paper, mat- 
w^eaving, clay - modelling, etc. — develop au 
intelligent interest in aud respect for the 
industrial arts. 

The games are the basis of moral develop- 
ment. 

While these are the main lines of thought, 
10 



146 



it is impossible to draw sharp Hues of defini- 
tion since, in some senses, each includes 
every other. 

No one can be more acutely aware than 
myself how, in the endeavor to bring the 
kindergarten within the limits of a half- 
hour description, I have left ont much of its 
life and spirit, and scarcely hinted at the 
l)hilosophy upon which it is founded. The 
mediation of opposites, or the law by which 
the forces of nature are kept in equilibrium, 
Avhich wastes and renews, destroys and re- 
builds, takes in and gives out — the persist- 
eucj^ with which, upon a fair adjustment of 
body, mind, and soul, or morality, an earnest 
religious spirit is developed — the various 
adjustments of work through which inde- 
pendence, generosity, concentration, alert- 
ness, all qualities of character are brought 
out and thought-power thrown along broad- 
er lines — these and other principles might 
be dwelt upou. 

I may call your attention to the fact that 
new schemes of physical development seem 
to grow from kindergarten seed. The Del- 
sarte gymnastic course embodies in its move- 
ments the wave of the bird-wing, the sinking 
of the frog, the uplifted hands to greet the 
sun-risiuii", etc. And the sounds of nature 



147 



furnish the best modern elocution practice. 
To get the timbre of voice which comes 
from throwing it forward into the nose and 
lips, what better or more delightful exer- 
cises than the soughing of the wind or the 
mooing of a cow ? 

I must give another word to the unity of 
action which is the ideal phase of the kinder- 
garten — that threefold development through 
w^hich the house, fitly framed together, is 
furnished throughout, and love becomes the 
dweller within. We hear of this wonderful, 
even growth of the physical, mental, and 
moral faculties ; but what is it in actual 
practice? Few schools seem to know. I 
often hear it announced as the animating 
principle of schools which in method might 
be removed to red school-houses fifty years 
back without serious trouble in the matter 
of readjusting the century. We know that 
formerly, in a child's education, to read was 
one thing considered alone, to write another, 
and to cipher another, and they all three 
referred to mental development. The phys- 
ical structure largely took care of itself ; and 
if it did not develop satisfactorily, the stu- 
dent was ordered to discontinue study. The 
two were not considered harmonious. Mo- 
rality, if not a matter of the home, was left 



148 



to the Cluircli. There seemed to be uo con- 
ception of the fact that these spheres conld 
not be relegated to diiferent departments — 
that they are indissolubly interwoven — a 
marvellous trinity in unity — that a strong 
body is indispensable to orderly mental ac- 
tion — that mental balance is apart of physi- 
cal health — that a clean, wholesome body 
and a clear mind are essential elements of 
morality— and that the whole is a dead ma- 
chine without a fine religious intensity to 
rule and direct it. But in the kindergarten 
this truth is never lost sight of. In the sim- 
plest mat, with the "one up, one down" of 
the blue strijis through the white, while his 
hand acquires skill, the child siugs of the 
bird's-nest and the basket-weaver, and his 
mind is enlarged by the conception of the 
fine line which joins animals with man. 
He works to develop his own power; yet, 
if need be, his work is laid aside that he 
may help some weaker one; and so he learns 
to temper the aggressive " All things are 
my right" with the gentler "All things are 
not expedient," which is the foundation of 
true and willing service for humanity. The 
little mat is to be a gift for father or mother. 
The more cleanly the Avork, the closer and 
straighter the weaving, the more worthy the 



149 



gift; aud so, iu the soil of liumau love, is 
sowed the seed of the religion which hum- 
bly refers its smallest service to divine 
approval. 

Of special developments of the kinder- 
garten I select two which seem to me of 
marked value — the education, or leading 
out, of the imagination, and of the love of 
nature. 

There is nothing so essential to whole- 
someness aud completeness of existence as 
imagination. In most of us it is deadened 
by a thousand artifices. Iu children we 
are often afraid of it, lest it lead into un- 
truth. Well, what is truth? Is it only some- 
thing that can be seen or felt or heard, like 
a chair, for instance. A chair can lie iu 
many vs^ays. It cau say strength in its ap- 
pearance, and carry the frailty of poor- 
est glue ; it can say wealth, and embody the 
disharmony of a plush -furnished parlor and 
a shabby dining-room; it can say beauty, 
and defy every principle of art. Truth is 
not concrete nor literal nor material — but 
ideal; aud imagination is the hand which 
draws aside the veil of material and shows 
us the shrine within. Pardon me if I illus- 
trate by an experience of my own. One 
Easter Suudny I opeued for the children a 



moth-cocooD wliic'li had beeu hanging in 
the library all winter. As the poor brown 
thing lay there — a marvellous contrast to 
the magnificent creature with waving wings 
which should have been born of it — we yet 
noticed a certain beauty in the regular 
circles of the body and the branching lines 
of the close-laid wings. I was remarking 
what a jiretty conventional Easter design 
could be made of a series of interlacing 
rings and folded wings, with free, waving 
wings coming out of and above them, when 
Mr. Chad wick suddenly exclaimed, '* It looks 
like Egyptian architecture." 

Suddenly the whole duml), dull ftice of 
Egypt passed before me — the introverted, 
unblooniing pillars of her temples, her im- 
ages with cramped limbs and moveless 
wings, her dead men and her dead divinities 
enswatbed in countless wrappings, and it 
seemed as if a sudden revelation had come 
to me of one of nature's great parallels. 
What if the centuries of Egypt's history 
were only the chrysalis's sleep in which lay 
folded the divine wings of the Christian 
resurrection ? Which was the truth ? The 
literal construction of the creature which 
lay before us — Avhich we could see and 
handle, or the interpretation through ira- 



151 



agination of that construction wLicb gave 
us the sense of God's slow and grand foot- 
steps through eternity ? 

On the first occasion of my reading this 
paper I Avas asked by a gentleman in the 
audience if I thought it possible to teach a 
child this form of truth. I have ever since 
regretted that my own slowness in formu- 
lating thought, and the approach of train- 
time prevented me from answering him. It 
seems to me so simple. The child of the pro- 
verbial " poor but honest " parents can easily 
be led to see the untruth of a plush coat. Not 
that it cannot be afforded; for the required 
price might be strained out of papa's pocket, 
but that it tells such horrible lies. It says, 
"Everything I wear and eat and liv^e with 
is as costly and fine as this coat. I have a 
maid who cares for my elegant attire, and 
Avalks with me when I go out, to see that I 
do not soil it. My mamma wears tailor- 
made street suits and silken house gowns. 
My papa drives to business with a pair of 
handsome grays." This child can be easily 
made to see that a room furnished with 
special elegance and set apart for purely so- 
cial purposes iu a home of very limited so- 
cial relations throws the home out of har- 
mony. Every child has daily opportunity 



to see this sort of truth, and the chikl ac- 
customed to this atmosphere is lifted largely 
out of tlie sphere of temptation to mere un- 
truth of the lips. The treud of all kinder- 
garten work is in this direction — is towards 
conceiving the relation of parts to each 
other and to the whole. It is an education 
in a sense of harmony and proportion — it 
aims at the power to take away here and 
put there in order to preserve balance — the 
power to sacrifice non-essentials for essen- 
tials — the power to see which are non-essen- 
tials and which are essentials — the power 
to liv^e towards ideals. 

Again, through sight and sound, through 
eager hope and happy remembrance, the 
kindergarten brings tlie child closer to dear 
Mother Earth. And love of nature is Imagi- 
nation's twin-sister, without which she is 
only half herself. Why are there so many 
who have eyes and see not ? Because the 
great gardeus of celestial beauty have been 
shut to them as children. We ch3se heav- 
en's gateway with the bolt of artifice, aiul 
w^hen the little ones are tired waiting they 
wander away. But the kiudergarteu, know- 
ing that there is a divine reason in a child's 
love of nature, draws the bolt, the children 
pass within and find God. And there are 



153 



deeper foiiudatious laid for tbem than the 
mere surface sense of beauty. For it is uot 
alone that rivers move to music, that 
clouds have radiance, and flowers all tender- 
ness of color and form — it is that there is a 
great heart in nature which is the other half 
of the passionate human heart — and that 
" deep calleth unto deep." 

But, having once made your chikl an 
American citizen, you can never again re- 
duce him to Oriental servitude. So no 
sketch of the kindergarten is complete with- 
out a hint at least of the inevitable out- 
growth which, some years ago, grouped its 
forms around the name of the new education. 

In the old system, to the well-known 
formula of reading, writing, and ciphering 
were added, at about the age of eight, the 
deeper abstractions of grammar and history 
and geography in such form that what was 
already narrowed into mere intellectual de- 
velopment was further narrowed into one 
department of the intellect — memory. At 
about twelve years of age he was asked to 
write a composition — on Spring, perhaps! 
To compose, classify, arrange, and express 
ideas ? Where had his previous training 
led up to this ? 

In the new education, while the little one 



154 



is yet busy with liis toys, lie groups around 
the Legend of Hiawatha the early history of 
his couutry, its geography, knowledge of 
the wild forest and of the teeming life of 
lake and river, of hunting, of primitive agri- 
culture, and of the customs of life among 
the Indians. Its wild yet simple names 
come more easily to him than his own 
tongue. 

The wild heron, the Shuh-shuh-gah, the 
fire - fly, Wah - wah - taysee, the Big Sea- 
Water, Gitche-Gumee, the Laughing Water, 
Miune-ha-ha, are names which appeal to the 
instinctive poetry in a child's nature, and 
are rehearsed even by a three-year-old out 
of pure x>leasure in the sound of them. 
Later on, the leaf-buds gathered in February, 
or the seeds planted in April, may be devel- 
oped into a study of forms of growth in 
many lands ; of comparative methods of cul- 
tivation ; of commerce and manufactures as 
impelling forces of civilization ; of different 
kinds of civilization as induced by differing 
natural agencies. And this habit of con- 
tinuity — of gravitatiug towards a centre 
while yet moving outward along different 
lines of thought, has an influence insensible 
but inevitable. It induces calmness, bal- 
ance, logic. And all this and more may 



155 



grow out of an exercise whicli is primarily 
only a language lesson, but which gives the 
child a grasp of the two main stays of edu- 
cation — power of thought and power of ex- 
pression. For, let ns put it as we may, let 
us assure ourselves (as we ought) of the 
value of certain branches, of the all-impor- 
tance of this, of the absolute necessity of that 
— it yet remains indisputable that the most 
potent evidence of culture in any man or 
woman among us is the ability to think 
clearly and the power to express thought 
in the English language, and nothing is so 
abominably and disgracefully neglected 
from the priuiary-school straight through 
the university. 

By the time the child is twelve years old 
he may never have opened an English gram- 
mar, but he has well begun '^ the art of speak- 
ing and writing tlie English language cor- 
rectly ;" and Longfellow, Whittier, Holmes, 
Irving, Shakespeare, Chaucer, Milton, are 
as open for his picking as a field of daisies. 
He may not know that " a noun is the name 
of any person, place, or thing." But he has 
a live interest in jyersons : Stanley and Ken- 
nan, Gladstone and Bismarck, Washington 
and Cresar. His knowledge of places is not 
limited to a list of capes or capitals. He 



15G 



kuows tlie geography aud climate (or cli- 
mates) of Russia, and wliat is going on there, 
and that Brazil is a live country struggling 
for a live government. Aud his study of 
things embodies the concrete foundations of 
science and mathematics, so when he is set 
dovrn to write a composition he has some 
facility in the grouping of ideas, some skill 
in the use of words. From the beginning, 
when he handled a live cat in his study of 
comparative physiology, and wrote in his 
own words what he saw and felt, he has 
been slowly led to enlarge his vocabu- 
lary through his own perceptions and 
thought, aud by a study of the best words 
of others. 

You may think my sketch of the old edu- 
cation unnecessary at the present time. I 
think I am not wrong in saying that,*in 
raauy of our representative schools, gram- 
mar is the same old deadening grind; geog- 
raphy is yet more political than physical 
or structural; history is learned so many 
pages at a lesson by students fourteen, fif- 
teen, and sixteen years old ; three-fourths of 
the arithmetic taught is a mass of unneces- 
sary rubbish which wears by its monotony 
while it plants no new principle, develops 
no faculty, and is worse than useless in the 



world of business men and Avouien.* Tlio 
students stultify growth with over -study 
until physical tone is permanently lost, men- 
tal development hindered by the close push 
and jostle of tumultuous ideas, and morality 
stifled by the mad prostration of our chil- 
dren before a car of Juggernaut called one 
hundred per cent. Allow me to ask what 
we are to do with the statement made by 
Dr. Andrews, of Brown University, that our 
boys and girls are two years behind the 
average of the same age in Germany ? If 
we cannot refute it, then let us clear out 
the dead brush which clogs their path, and 
wastes two beautiful years. I saj', let us; 
for it is a cause which belongs to women. 
And particular!}", let no woman who is a 
mother ever lose the courage of her convic- 
tidtos ; for the saying "Many mickles make a 
mnckle" is everlastingly true. In the hope 
and heart-throb of only one individual every 
great movement is first conceived ; but out 
of the live and unified wills of many it is 
finally born into open life and action. 

Concerning the practical part of your 



* Aud ait, mnsic, science, and literature are not even 
dreamed of as essential aud inherent elements of a 
balanced scheme of education. 



work, let me give you a few hints out of 
my own experience in connection with the 
Froebel Academy. In the first place, I 
would advise you to elect a board of trus- 
tees out of your best business men and most 
intelligent women. There is no spur to a 
work equal to a good board. Second, be- 
come incorporated as soon as possible ; for 
to be engrafted on the law gives a sense of 
permanence which cannot be obtained in 
any other way. 

Third, engage no teacher, whatever her 
recommendations, without iuterviewiug her 
personally. And, in this case, consider care- 
fully the power of personal influence upon 
children as exerted by character, physical 
health and temperamental moods. Take at 
any time a good, common - sense, large- 
hearted teacher of the most old-fashioned 
type rather than a young woman who has 
made herself hysterical by superimposing 
the study of the kindergarten upon an al- 
ready overtaxed brain. 

Fourth, as an element of growth, establish 
a system of correspondence with and exam- 
ination of other schools. You caunot stop 
with a kindergarten. You must grow with 
the children. So examine frankly the lines 
of study in the best institutions everyw^here, 



159 



that you ma}^ establish yourselves for the 
time to come. 

Fifth, I would recommeutl a careful study 
of kiudergarteu theory. While the material 
part of the system is, iu a limited seuse, 
well known, it is not generally conceived 
that the theory — the philosophy of child- 
nature — is the essential part of it. The 
kiudergartner who is skilled only in the 
material part of her profession is one who 
plays scattered melodies, deftly and grace- 
fully, perhaps ; but she lacks the motive 
power which should group the rich harmonic 
chords of child-nature. I have said some- 
where before, and I take pleasure in repeat- 
ing it, that the kindergarten is not a system 
of materials, but a system of principles. And 
we mothers usually look into it at the 
Avrong end. We enter a strange country 
without a guide. If we could only master a 
few principles, when we entered a kinder- 
garten — whether we saw game, or story, or 
occupation, or gift — it would be intelligible 
to us as taking its place in the scheme we 
have in mind. Or, if it did not, we should 
be in a position to inquire. Why not ? and 
perhaps add a new principle to our list, or 
even be bold enough to doubt if what we 
see represents any principle at all. 



160 



I may here, since I am talking to motliers, 
say a word in their j)rivate ear. In every 
movement in which men and women are as- 
sociated, while the men give us material 
success added to the indispensable elements 
of integrity and jndgment, yet the scope of 
the work is narrow and cramped or broad 
and expansive according to the impulse of 
the women. Money does not count for every- 
thing. The real thing which tells in any 
public enterprise is that intelligent and gen- 
uine sympathy which shows itself in per- 
sonal co-operation with its work, and thought- 
ful consideration of the plans proposed. And, 
as a rule, the proportion in which a man 
shows this sympathy indicates the height at 
which his wife keeps the thermometer. 

Again, be independent. Criticize the kin- 
dergarten. Ask if the lines of its drawing 
are too fine and restricted, if certain com- 
binations of color try the eyes, if the use of 
the piano is good, if too large a class is irri- 
tating to children of sensitive nerves, if the 
family grouping of six or eight is better. 
Anything in the shape of a question is good 
for the kindergarten and good for you. 

And, in the name of all patriotism, have 
the spirit of a champion for your city. The 
signal for the great race of educational re- 



161 



form has soniuled clearly through all the 
country. These two cities, Brooklyn and 
New York, like lazy young athletes, seem to 
be almost deaf to the cries of their backers ; 
Philadelphia is following on the heels of 
steady Boston ; the lithe young West has 
outstripped us from the start. Where are 
the men and women who will see to it that 
Jamaica comes in on the home-run ? 

Finally, since there is but one answer to 
the question, Can any good thing come out 
of Nazareth ? and that is. Come and see, let 
me ask you to visit your kindergarten fre- 
quently. But I beg of you to look with 
open and candid eyes. Do not come warped 
with in-ejudice in favor of something old, 
neither ready to be swept away by some- 
thing new. Let us all think only and purely 
and clearly of the " Little Child" who leads 
us; and let us do humbly and reverently 
our part towards refulfilling that old proph- 
ecy which, like all truth, repeats itself 
through successive ages in new and living- 
forms. 
11 



THE KINDERGARTEN IN THE MOTH- 
ER'S WORK.* / 

BY MRS. ELIZABETH POWELL* BOND. 

" The Lord cauuot be everywhere, so He 
made motliers." 

This statement, attributed to a Jewish 
rabbi, although it be a poetic rather thau a 
scientific statement, conveys to us the scope 
of the mother's calling. She stands, in very 
truth, the handmaid of the Lord, called to 
His holy of holies to work out His law of 
creation. Alas, that this holy office should 
ever be degraded ! Alas, that the ignorance 
and thoughtlessness of the world should rob 
this sacred service of its sanctity, and make 
it to be held of less account than the har- 
vest of grain or the return from orchard and 
vineyard I 

A thoughtful woman once said to me: 
" I wonder that any woman dares to be- 

* A paper read before the Kindergarten Department 
of the National Association of Teachers at Saratoga. 



come a motber, tbat sbe dares to tbink Uiat 
her cbild will tbauk ber for the gift of life." 
It is a fearful responsibility^ indeed, to create 
auotber V>eing, wbo must accept life witb all 
its limitations and possibilities, its weeping 
and its gladness, its failnres and its suc- 
cesses. Tbe woman may well pause where 
"angels wonld fear to tread!" To dwell 
upon the responsibility alone wonld pre- 
clude motherhood. But since she is ap- 
pointed of the Lord to stand in His creative 
place, this law of her being asserts itself 
above the crushing sense of responsibility ; 
and love, hope, and faith find fruition in 
ber child. 

In Longfellow's noble drama Michael An- 
gelo says : 

"In every block of marble 
I see a statue— see it as distinctly 
As if it stood before me shaped and perfect 
In attitude and action. I have only 
To hew away the stone walls that imprison 
The lovely apparition, and reveal it 
To other eyes as mine already see it." 

Very difterent from tbe creative work of 
the sculptor is tbat of tbe motber. Tbe 
beautiful, jjassive marble stands before him 
absolutely subject to bis strokes. He may 
carve to-day a rude outline of the '^ lovely 



appaiitiou," and then may turn away for 
mouths aud years, and still the unfinished 
statue waits patiently the return of his shap- 
ing hand, of his unerring mallet, that shall 
transform it from the block of stone to the 
almost animate image of a god. The ex- 
pectant mother, having placed her own life 
in the balance, receives into her arms her 
tiny babe. More helpless it is, this minia- 
ture man or woman, than the young creat- 
ures whose bodies bound their needs and 
capabilities ; but passive like marble it never 
is. The very elements of marble she could 
lay bare before her. But in her arms is this 
living, breathing statuette, whose being is 
all a mystery to her, and which she has yet 
undertaken to work upon as the sculptor 
works upon his clay. The fashioning hand 
of law has already touched it. In the si- 
lence and darkness of its pre-natal life un- 
seen and incalculable forces have wrought 
upon it. The unwritten law of the mother's 
being and of the father's being have worked 
together or against each other in moulding 
their child. And they have brought forth 
a new creature whose like is not to be found 
" in all the wide earth's ample round." The 
mother knows not absolutely the law of her 



165 



she foresee the product of these unknown 
forces acting on each other. Not less mys- 
terious, then, than the "Man ^yith the Iron 
Mask" is this helpless, silent little creature, 
who for a whole year has '' no language but 
a cry " in which to plead for the righting of 
its wrongs, or a gracious smile betokening 
ease or response to looks of love. 

The creative work of the mother has been 
accomplished, and now she must devote her- 
self to the nurture and guidance of her child. 
And let me say that I shall allow myself the 
privilege of considering my theme from the 
stand-point of ideal motherhood as I conceive 
it ; for is it not best to keep our faces turned 
towards the ideal ? And not for one moment 
do I enter into judgment upon the over- 
burdened mother whose life must be a con- 
tinual struggle against poverty, or that other 
mother whose fate is still more sad in find- 
ing the greatest obstacle to her work in the 
father of her child. But let that mother 
give thanks morning and evening whose 
creative work of motherhood has been ac- 
complished in an atmosphere of sustaining 
sympathy, and whose physical strength has 
never been taxed at the expense of her child. 
That mother begins her work of nurture 
and guidance with every human advantage. 



166 



While the law of heredity cannot be formu- 
lated, indeed seems to be past finding out, 
we cannot doubt that that child is best 
equipped for life whose inheritance is a 
harmonions, well-balanced nature, whose 
chances for i)hy8ical health are good, and 
who takes his i)lace in the world, not with 
the hesitancy and timidity of an unhidden 
guest, but with the happy assurance that he 
comes to his own place — a X3lace that waits 
for him and no other. 

The first years of the child's life must be 
given largely to his physical nurture. Good 
teeth, good stomach, sound flesh, stout mus- 
cles, steadj^ nerves — these .are the instru- 
ments of this J) resent life, and it is of the 
utmost importance that these he secured to 
the child. And they do not come in a hap- 
hazard, matter-of-course way. They need 
the direct, personal supervision of the moth- 
er. She may have the help of paid service 
in doing some of the details of this work, 
but she must herself give her mind to it, to 
select the food best suited to the body\s 
growth, and to provide it at proper and 
regular intervals; to make the dress suita- 
ble for the best protection of the body and 
the development of the muscles ; to secure 
healthful, nerve-strengthening sleep. She 



can buy for money the service of cook, par- 
lor-maifl, or seamstress; she can delegate to 
the childless, for the time being, her society 
duties, and she can iutermit for a brief sea- 
son her own intellectual pursuits, rather 
than trust to hired service her baby's physi- 
cal nurture. Is it a hard thing to require 
of the mother that she shall devote herself 
so closely to her child? Let her remeniber 
that motherhood is her business now! She 
has had lier school-life, she has had society, 
she has had literature, she has had wifehood 
— now she is a mother, pledged by the sa- 
creduess and the infinite import of this new 
calling to self-abnegation, to the highest good 
of the child to whom she stands as creat )r 
and providence! And, besides, how short 
is the time of this close devotion of the 
mother ! Only a few years, and so qnickly 
flown, and the self- dependent life of the 
child begins, and then the mother may go 
back to her queenship in society, all the 
more a queen ; or she may take np her books, 
or her pen, enlarged and enriched in natnre 
by the deep experiences of motherhood. 

But it is not to the physical needs alone 
that the mother must so closely devote her- 
self The spirit begins to assert itself almost 
with the first breath, an 1 along with the work 



168 



of unrtiire rimst be taken up the work of guid- 
ance. At this point a fatal mistake is often 
made. TLie very helplessness of the baby 
so appeals to the mother's tenderness and 
pity that she is thrown off her guard, and 
sometimes forgets that a most important 
part of her office is to train this daily unfold- 
ing human plantlet — to control this "small 
despot," as Emerson names the baby, and of 
Avhom he graphically says that he '' asks so 
little that all nature and all reason are ou 
his side. His ignorance is more charming 
than all knowledge, and his little sins more 
bewitching than any virtue. . . . The small 
enchanter nothing can withstand — no sen- 
iority of age, no gravity of character; un- 
cles, aunts, grandsires, grandames — all fall 
an easy prey ; he conforms to nobody ; all 
caper, and make mouths, and babble, and 
chirrup to him. On the strongest shouldei'S 
he rides, and pulls the hair of laurelled 
heads." The little sins of the little baby 
are bewitching indeed, as Emerson declares ; 
but the mother must protect herself against 
their enchantment, for they are insidious, 
and, growing with the growth of the baby, 
soon cease to be little sins, and change to 
fixed habits that endanger the peace of the 
child and all connected with him. I have 



heard a mother mourn that her boy of twelve 
could uot be depeuded upou. She could not 
trust him to do au errand that required 
prompt execution, and all attempts to direct 
his study or his play, or to engage him in 
regular work, were utter failures. It was 
plain to see that this mother had never taken 
up the leadership — that she had always du- 
tifully followed the cry of the infant, the 
wilfid outbursts of the little hoy ; and now 
she was absolutely helpless before this un- 
disciplined, self - asserting child of twelve. 
If the year-old baby has acquired the leader- 
ship, alas for the mother, and alas, too, for 
the baby! She will never overtake him or 
outrank him in authority. She must begin 
almost with the first cry of her little one to 
assert herself as its guide — to decide upon 
the general course of its develoj)meut. She 
need not make a procrustean programme of 
action, but she should work to an elastic 
plan that will suit itself to the hour's needs. 
She must begin very early gently to prac- 
tise him in self-control, in regularity of ac- 
tion. The superabundant egoism of this 
"royal guest," who feels that " all the earth 
is his, and all the fulness thereof," must be 
brought face to face with the egoism of 
other royal guests, and so made to know 



its limitatious. To do all this — aud this is 
the fav-reachiiig work of the mother during 
the infaucy of her child — requires that moth- 
er-love have in it an element of heroism, of 
Spartan, firmness, that shall carry her calmly 
and triumphantly through the storms of in- 
fant passion that may burst without warn- 
ing upon her ; that shall enable her to sacri- 
fice the child's momentary jdeasure to his 
future good. A bright woman, not herself 
a mother, however, was once heard to say: 
'^ I believe aunts are a great deal better for 
children than their mothers, because the 
mother always wishes to let the child have 
his own way, while the aunt does not con- 
sider this in the least." 

This brings me to the second part of my 
theme — the help that the mother may find 
in her work from the well-conducted kinder- 
garten. At the age of three the time of 
babyhood may be said to have passed and 
the period of childhood begun. Tlie little 
one has acconiplislied two most difficult 
things : he has mastered his feeble, stum- 
bling feet and brought them to a firm step; 
he has broken the silence of his first year's 
life and now speaks the speech of father 
and mother, literally reproducing the words, 
well or ill spoken, that he hears about him. 



171 



He is keenly alive at every poiut. His eyes 
are quick to see the wonders aud the glories 
about him, his ears catch every uew souud, 
his bauds grasp every instruaieut that af- 
fords expression to bis activity. It is to be 
hoped that good physical habits have been 
established, aud it is also to be hoped that 
the devoted mother has been able so to 
shape the gradually unfolding mental pow- 
ers that they have acquired right directions 
of growth. Now he is ready to begin in 
earnest his systematic training for life. 
Since he is not to live an isolated life, but 
must take his place with his fellows, to work 
as one force among many forces, his educa- 
tion can best go on from this point, in the 
society of his peers, along witli other little 
ones who have reached the same degree of 
development. Now the kindergarten opens 
its doors to him, to co-operate with the moth- 
er, to supplement her work, to lead him gen- 
tly and safely along the pathway in which 
mother -love and wisdom have started his 
footsteps. Let me quote from Mr. Hailmann, 
who says that " the kindergarten is not a 
mere ingenious contrivance, invented for 
the purjiose of amusing little children in- 
structively and of relieving the indolent or 
over-burdened mothers of troublesome em- 



bryo sufferers, but a i^Zrt/i of education tbat 
bas its roots far down in cbild-nature, and 
tbat sbelters beneatb its braucbes strong, 
ripe men and women. It is not a mere cun- 
ning insertion between tbe nursery and tbe 
scbool, intended to train up tbe raw material 
for tbe wisdom-factories, but a full scheme 
of education tbat is to lead tbe buman being 
from birtb to maturity on tbe road of a wise 
and useful activity to tbe goal of true bap- 
piness." 

Now, for a few bours eacb day, tbe motber 
trusts her little one to tbe guidance of tbe 
kindergartner, wbo must be a w^oman of 
gentle and also beroic nature, profoundly 
tutored in tbe pbilosophj^ of education. Sbe 
greets tbe cbild witb smiling face and with 
tbat courtesy wbicb sbe wisbes sbould grace 
bis intercourse witb otbers. Sbe takes bim 
out of bis isolation and leads bim into a cir- 
cle of little ones, bis peers — a new experience 
to bim — and sbe teacbes bim bow to live 
witb tbem. He finds bimself witb ten or 
twenty otber cbildren, all wisbiug tbe best 
place, or tbe sweetest flower, or to cboose 
tbe morning song. She gently and patient- 
ly sbows bim bow to give up bis own wisb 
when otbers sbould bave tbe cboice (a les- 
son, is it not, in citizensbip in a republic?). 



and not ouly to surrender his own wish, 
but to enter heartily into the joy of his 
fellows iii choosing. She teaches him in a 
thousand ways that 

"All are needed by each one ; 
Nothing is fair or good alone." 

She makes song the medium of many les- 
sons to him. By the happy aid of the imagi- 
nation he flies with the bird as he sings, he 
nestles under the protecting branches of the 
trees, he gathers nuts with the squirrels, he 
grinds the flour with the miller, he mows the 
grass with the farmer, or he drives the nails 
with the carpenter. He learns the colors and 
odors of flowers. He grows to be hail-fellow 
with caterpillars and turtles. He is brought 
close to the heart of nature through this lov- 
ing faniiliaritj' with her varied forms, and all 
the years of his life will thereby be enriched 
and gladdened. And these songs will be so 
nuiny seed-grains in his soul, to mature in 
due season as they sing themselves over and 
over to him, and fructify in forms that we 
cannot foretell. He is trained to move with 
music. This not only cultivates ease and 
grace of bodily movement, but it directly ex- 
ercises the will-power to hold the action of 
the muscles to the time of the music. The 



174 



baud, that woiRlerful instrument of human 
activity, is from the beginning restrained 
from destructiveness and trained to service. 
The needle, the pencil, and the modelling- 
knife are the tools with which the hand is 
directed by the mind towards definite results. 
The eye becomes skilled in the comparison 
and measurement of objects. To-day's oc- 
cupations are the natural successors of yes- 
terday's achievements, and are carefully 
chosen as preparatory to the work for to- 
morrow. It is only in thus associating with 
other children that the moral nature can be 
harmoniously developed. It is this associa- 
tion with others that calls out selfishness or 
generosity, that trains him to be just to their 
claims, that strengthens him in self-restraint, 
that stimulates his helpfulness. 

In this brief outline I have indicated the 
threefold nature of the kindergartner's work 
with the child as supplemental to the moth- 
er's work. It is directed towards his 
healthful physical development; in accord- 
ance with the laws of mind it directs his 
mental growth, and his moral nature is care- 
fully stimulated and nurtured. As illustra- 
tive of my subject, let me add a few notes 
that I have been privileged to select from a 
kindergartner's note-book, a record kept only 



175 



for her own use, but kindly placed at my 
service : 

*'This morning M grew quite angry 

over bis w^ork because be could not do it at 
once; almost frantic — twitcbed and kicked, 
stiffening bis limbs. I told bim to go into 
the dressing-room by bimself, and to come 
back to us just as soon as be was over bis 
bad feelings. He came out in about two 
minutes, smiling, and went to work as if 
nothing bad happened." 

*' Was so pleased to-day to see what con- 
trol S had over his eyelids under trying 

circumstances. He, with others, had been 
requested to close them on account of too 
nuich noise from that quarter. Just then, 
or soon after, Miss E came in with a tur- 
tle, wiiich she allow^ed to crawl over the 
floor, much to the children's delight. They 

made demonstrations, so that S knew 

that something unusual was going on in the 
room, but be did not move bis eyelids." 

"A little boy brought bis drawing-book 
to me to have me rub out some poor work 
be bad done; said, as be banded it to me, in 
a wise and apologetic way, ' that his eyes 
were a little out of sight when he did that.' " 

" During the morning sing to-day, when 



176 



all were assembled, two turtles, a large and 
a small one, were brought iu for tbe chil- 
dren to look at. The turtles crawled about, 
going towards some children. Not one was 
frightened ; but all were delighted, and 
laughed aloud." 

'' Was talking to K alone on Friday 

about telling the truth and owning when 
he had done wrong, instead of denying it, as 
he usually does. To-day he was put to the 
test, and conquered himself by confessing 
promptly when questioned." 

To these notes of the kindergartner let 
me add, also, some of the points of the replies 
which I have received to mj^ personal inquiry 
of mothers, " What help have you had from 
the kindergarten in your work with your 
children ?" — "The love of flowers instilled 
into the children." "Tbe lessons in man- 
ners, the habits of punctuality and regular-" 
ity." "The happiness of the children." 
"The habit of working or playing to a plan, 
the concentration of the mind upon one 
thing at a time, the habits of order." " The 
exactness of the children in measuring lines 
with the eye." " Their knowledge of birds." 
" The ease with which the little girls nse a 
needle." " The ability to occupy themselves 



177 



at home in kiudergcarteii ways." " The cul- 
tivation of generosity." " The practice of 
apj)ealing to the child's reason, which makes 
it easj'' to govern him." These replies are 
from mothers who have had one, two, or 
three children carried through the four years' 
course of kindergarten training. It seems 
to me they cover every point claimed for this 
training. No criticism has reached me di- 
rectly from mothers, but I have heard in one 
or two instances of this complaint: "Since 
my child has been in the kindergarten he is 
a great deal more troublesome." I learned 
that this complaint was made of children 
who had been alone up to the kindergarten 
age, and probably their association with 
other children had brought out some traits 
which the mother had had no chance to dis- 
cover before. It may be that they were onlj'^ 
confirmations of the need of the child to be 
trained to live with his fellows. 

But I think it probable that there are 
some children too delicately organized to 
bear the excitement of a large kindergarten, 
who could not endure the nervous strain of 
three hours in the stimulating society of a 
large number of children. And there is still 
another point that must give some solicitude 
to conscientious mothers. Little ones care- 
12 



fully inirtni'od at home are exposed to the 
danger of contamiuatiou wheu tliej' associate 
with childreu from homes in which vulgar 
influences prevail. However great the care 
of the kiudergartner to protect from this 
danger, the rough word will sometimes reach 
the unaccustomed ear, and the rude action 
startle the gentle child, or be reproduced by 
the very susceptible one. But in my opinion 
the risk is overbalanced by the greater dan- 
ger that threatens the children who must be 
reared in isolation. 

One word is to be said of the help which 
the mother may gain to herself from her re- 
lation to the wise kiudergartner. If she be 
a thoughtless, undisciplined mother — and 
there are such in every stratum of society — 
the life of her cliild in the kindergarten may 
be the "new birth" to herself; it may be 
a revelation undreamed-of of the sacred- 
uess of her work as mother. If she be an 
ideal mother, she has now the co-operation 
of one whose consecration to the develop- 
ment of child-nature makes her second only 
to the mother herself in her interest in the 
child, and from the two standpoints of 
mother and kiudergartner they cau study 
the perplexing j)roblems that are sure to 
arise iu the course of the child's develop- 



179 



ment. The kiudergartner is likely to have 
this advantage over the mother, that her 
traiuiug has led her to look deei)ly iuto the 
philosophy of education, and so to look with 
a larger charity upon the child, and to see 
in what the mother grieves over as naughti- 
ness only the crudity which time will cor- 
rect. On the other hand, the kiudergartner 
may discover reall^^ evil tendencies which 
had escaped the mother, and which call for 
their combined efforts to overcome. Tims 
she will find in the kiudergartner consoler 
and counsellor; indeed, each will support 
the other in their united work to secure for 
the child a harmonious development of his 
nature, to direct his outlook upward and his 
footsteps forward towards ideal manhood or 
womanhood. 

And the mother, as handmaid of the Lord, 
finds in the consecrated kiudergartner a fel- 
low-worker in the garden of the Lord. 



OUTGROWTHS OF KINDERGARTEN 
TRAINII^G.* 

BY MRS. A. Bf LONGSTREET. 

In our discussion of the kiudergarteu, we 
have dealt with theories aud methods, with 
principles aud practice, with the actual pres- 
ent workings of the Froebel idea. You will 
pardon me, therefore, and I trust that you 
will not think that I go too far afield, if I 
devote the time you have so kindly allotted 
me to a consideration of the value of the 
Froebelian training in after years. I wish 
especially to speak of the economic, aesthetic, 
and moral uses to girls and women of hand- 
work. 

The influence of the mind over the body 
has always been acknowledged; but the 
power of the body over the mind has until 
very recently been unconsidered or largely 
underrated. Brain power and physical force 
in human beings ought to balance each 

* An address read before aWoman's Club in the course 
of an educational discussion. 



other; and in properly developed men and 
•women they do. That women are less ro- 
bust than men is as easily accounted for as 
that one hand is usually stronger and more 
dexterous than the other. A child may be 
born with more power in one hand than in 
the other, but this is merely a marked proof 
of heredity, and not common. As a proof of 
the influence of training, or of mind over 
matter, we notice that when a person uses 
to a great extent the strength and skill of 
the right hand, the left foot is larger than 
the right, and can be depended upon longer 
as a support than its fellow. This develop- 
ment, which is Nature's method of preserv- 
ing a balance of power and poise of person, 
may be called physical equilibrium, and 
there is a similar relation between the braiu 
and the hands. 

Superior force, skill or orderliness in hand- 
icraft is sure to be attended by a well-fur- 
nished and orderly mind. Not that the intel- 
lect always has had or even needs a regular 
school training ; but it has had self-direction 
by some systematic method that may have 
been original with itself. That such meth- 
odical improvement is possible by means of 
self- teaching and self-guidance cannot be 
denied by any one who has had the good- 



18'J 



fortune to draw ont and discover tlie 
thoughts, opinions, and attainments of some 
master -mechanic who has had practically 
no schooling. In such a man will be found 
a mine of valuable intelligence and original 
thought ; and it is undoubtedly true that 
had this self-instructed man acquired his 
education by less diflQcult and devious ways, 
he would have reached tlie heigbt of ftxme, 
or, better still, have attained the perfection 
of usefulness to his kind. 

The value of hand-training for women has 
only lately come to be recognized ; but the 
discovery is arousing a deep and broad en- 
thusiasm that expresses itself in many ways 
and in all grades of life, from the child who 
is to become the future bread-winner up to 
the rich woman of society. Little girls, 
grown girls, and matrons are finding pleas- 
ure, health, and usefulness in hand-training. 
The colleges have opened a vista of the 
highest possibilities in the development of 
the brain forces of woman. They have pre- 
pared her to enter well-equipped into almost 
any field of intellectual and administrative 
Avork ; and, to keep her physically in good 
condition, gymnasiums, directed by profes- 
sors of health-culture, have been provided. 
This college training fits women for profes- 



sions that require disciplined and well-stored 
miuds, but it provides them uo especial hand 
culture, if iustrumental music and the rep- 
resentative and plastic arts be excepted. 
Among the professions for which woman's 
colleges are fitting her are analytical chem- 
istry, landscape gardening, and agriculture, 
the practice of medicine, various branches 
of literary work, conveyancing, notarial 
work, etc., not to mention the higher grades 
of teaching. But this traininf^, even with 
the aid of skilfully directed gymnastics, has 
not set her upon firm feet and given her 
perfect health and that robust endurance 
which a wise combination of handicraft with 
brain discipline is sure to produce. 

But, not considering the uses of hand- 
training in strengthening the muscles and 
maintaining the health, we must reflect that 
it opens up to woman many remunerative 
occupations that have hitherto been closed 
to her, or at least deemed wholly unsuited 
to her strength. lb is now freely admitted 
by the highest authorities on female educa- 
tion (although but lately strenuously denied 
by them) that the term "higher education," 
as apj)lied to women, means a well-rounded 
development of every force that goes to 
make up her personality. The education of 



the Lands, ej^es, and feet ; the pose and flexi- 
bility of the body, which includes its full 
perfection of form, grace, and color, and the 
method of breathing and of motion are now 
intimately associated with the ordinary pro- 
cesses of intellectual growth ; and mechani- 
cal skill, in one or in many crafts, is made a 
strong aid to the acquirement of knowledge. 
Indeed, wliile learning to do one thing with 
the hands, we acquire much skill in many 
other occupations or amusements, not to 
mention the fact that we gain an exact 
knowledge of cost, value, weight, endurance, 
flexibilitj^, adaptability, and dimensions of 
things, and many useful and interesting 
facts regarding objects hitherto imconsid- 
ered or greatly neglected. 

It is the far-off and mysterious that has 
too much engrossed the interest of clever 
women hitherto ; but they are now begin- 
ning to apply their imagination and their 
manual skill to practical matters. Handi- 
craft trains the muscles and the perceptive 
faculties of women to a delicate manipula- 
tive proficiency that j)roves of immense 
value to the industries geuerallj^ and to her 
own talents in i^articular. A little later, 
training of the hands will become an indis- 
pensable necessity to all competitive work- 



185 



ers, both iu the arts aud in industrial pur- 
suits. Indeed, these two are drawing very 
near together, since tlie crafts are now be- 
ing taken up by persons of the finest in- 
herited gifts and largest intellectual acquire- 
ments. No matter what a person's natural 
talents may be, an intelligent training of 
the hands has become absolutely necessary 
to the performance of all skilled work, as 
well as to the attainment of proficiency in 
things only aesthetic or ornamental. Theo- 
retic information and a dependence upon 
memory will no longer serve a manipulator 
in work of any importance. Since the im- 
mense value of habitual hand-training and 
the application of the hands to the develop- 
ment of all plans and theories has been rec- 
ognized by scholars, and even by many who 
have hitherto led lives of luxurious ease, a 
wonderful amount of interest has been 
evinced in every industry, aud many useful 
branches of handicraft that have heretofore 
been overlooked by the learned and the peo- 
ple of leisure are now being taken up with 
enthusiasm. 

The good of all this practical earnestness 
is so extensive and wide-spread that it is 
difficult to name any one benefit as being 
more desirable than another. But one thing 



is certain, and that h that the universal 
training of the hands to practical work, 
and the acquirement of education as much 
through the sense of touch and a master's 
guidance of the muscular or physical powers 
as through the studying of many books, in- 
crease the dignity of all mechanical labor 
and add to the growing respect for excel- 
lence in every constructive effort. 

Many a girl graduate has hitherto pre- 
ferred selling pins across a counter to per- 
forming useful mechanical labor. She has 
considered it beneath her to work with her 
hands. For her benetit let me say that a 
college of carpenters for University women 
has been established in Cambridge, Eng- 
land, and that its instructors are so pressed 
for space at the benches, wheels, and lathes 
that no student is allowed to spend more 
than half a day in each week at wood-work- 
ing unless she rises early to obtaiu an addi- 
tional hour on Saturday morning, this extra 
time being invariably seized with eagerness. 
Many women are mentally equipped to do 
excellent industrial work. They need only 
opportunity and practice, which can be had 
if they set themselves properly about it. 

Of course, the jirejudice against manual 
labor on the part of man or woman who has 



acquired a so-called "edacatiou" will die 
bard aud slowly in many proud and stub- 
born minds. But tbis need not disbearteu 
US, wben we reflect tbat it is not many cen- 
turies since tbe practice or even tbe knowl- 
edge of penmansbip was deemed beneath 
tbe notice of tbe bigb-born, being consid- 
ered in tbe ligbt of a trade. Scribes were 
employed to write and to read writing, and 
tbey ranked witb otber craftsmen, tbougb 
not so bigb as metal-workers, wood-car\^- 
ers, and tbe like. Frequently tbe same man 
pursued tbe two vocations of barber and of 
writer or scribe. Comparing tbe estimate 
once placed upon a man wbo could write, 
and tbe pity and even contempt now felt 
for tbose wbo cannot pen tbeir own names, 
it is easy to perceive tbat tbe time may not 
be far distant wben a woman will be as 
proud of carving aud mounting a dressing- 
table or easy cbair, as sbe now is of having 
embroidered and made up a tea-cosy or a 
sofa-pillow. 

In tbe first i)lace, band culture, besides 
making women better scholars, cleverer 
thinkers, and keener logicians, and develop- 
ing their physique, evolves an additional 
sense — a sense that but for this training 
would be wholly lost to the individual aud 



to the world. It calls into more perfect use 
both the toucli and tlie sight, the latter rec- 
ogniziug niaii}^ hitherto uuobserved qualities 
iu objects, aud the former becomiug quicker 
and more sensitive to mechanical faults, aud 
gaining a constructive impulse. 

Girls manifest very early a tendency to 
construct things, but this iucliuation, out- 
side the making of the doll's wardrobe, paper 
flowers, aud similar trifles, has been dis- 
couraged hitherto. Now here comes in one 
of the most important economic beuelits of 
tbe kindergarten training. Girls, as well as 
boys, weave, build, balance, mould ; learn to 
use simple tools; to estimate form, size, 
height, distance, by the eye, and to acquire 
a beautiful dexterity and precision of the 
hand. But the value of even this natural 
method of rousing, quickening, and develop- 
ing a girl's best mental and mechanical fac- 
ulties, as well as her physical graces and 
forces, is too commonly under-estimated by 
unobservant or ignorant mothers. To create 
a taste, or encourage a talent for construction, 
is in the highest sense economic ; for with 
this faculty well and practically trained, the 
girl graduate is prepared for self-support 
and ready to maintain an honorable inde- 
pendence, provided she has only a small 



cliance to acquire practical proficiency. It 
was a recognition of this fact in some coun- 
tries which led the wealthiest and most ex- 
alted to endow their sons and daughters 
with trades. The old Duke Maximilian, of 
Bavaria, set a fine example, which, unhai^pily, 
the world has been slow to follow. He ed- 
ucated his five sons and daughters, not to 
become amateurs, but to be practically able 
to earn their bread should fortune fail them ; 
and if we may judge by their portraits, their 
childhood, spent alternately in the work-shop 
and in the school-room, must have been a 
happy one. Tltere was less routine in their 
lives than there would have been if books 
only had been their companions ; and phy- 
siologists say that monotony is deadening 
to the perceptive faculties and to hope, and 
hurtful to the functions and growth of the 
body. 

When a woman reflects that it is custom 
that makes her right-handed, and that a left- 
handed person is quite rare, her mind con- 
tinues the reasoning aud informs her that 
she is capable of far greater dexterity with 
her hands than was born with her. She is 
right-handed because the habit of her an- 
cestors and the watchful care of her mother 
her remote forefathers held 



1^0 



their swords or spears iu the right haud, and 
the habit of right - haudedness has been 
transmitted to the present day. It is said, 
however, that sucli ailments as curvatnre of 
the spine, uneven shoulders, or uneqnal hips 
are seldom found in persons who use both 
hands with equal skill. This is explained 
by the fact that when we use the right hand 
while standing, the body is poised naturally 
upon the left foot, and if this band is ex- 
ceptionall}^ skilled, the other is j>roportion- 
ately incapable ; hence, in such cases the 
body seldom rests evenly upon both feet, 
and the bones adjust themselves to an ha- 
bitual one-sided, out-of-plumb attitude. Con- 
sidering that the body is thus easily per- 
verted and misshapen, those who have the 
care of children cannot lay too much stress 
upon handicraft as a means of health and 
fine development, even though they may not 
perceive the effect such training has upon 
the mind. 

In Sweden the training of the hands has 
been so successful that educators of other 
lands have gone thither to learn the methods 
practised. In the language of this sturdy 
Swedish race, handicraft is called "sIojmI," 
which means clever, cunning, handy. In 
England, and in eastern American cities, the 



191 



introduction of manual culture into tbe fam- 
ily school - rooms of the rich has already 
proved of especial advantage to girls, who 
are taught to use one hand as skilfully as 
the other. Tbe women of the family re- 
ceive instruction with the children, and 
among the good things the system produces 
are accuracy, industry, forethought, perse- 
verance (it being a fixed principle that what- 
ever is begun shall be completed), orderli- 
ness, sympathy with workers in all crafts, 
a marked development of mental ax)titudes 
and physical powers, and a noticeable lessen- 
ing of recurring ailments. Morally, the sys- 
tem creates a fondness for work in general 
— honest, good work — and a feeling of com- 
radeship with others who strive to create 
anything in art or industry. Far more po- 
tent than words is work done along kindred 
lines to efface the suspicion, hatred, and 
envy subsisting between employer and em- 
ployed, the rich and tiie poor. 

Outside the moral uses of a physical edu- 
cation tending to definite results, the learner 
takes keen delight in noting the growth of 
the dexterity of her own hands ; and this 
satisfaction is felt, whether the purpose of 
training is the learning of a useful trade or 
merely the satisfaction of creating something. 



192 



Adepts iu any Hue of band- work are always 
ready to become instructors, and tbeirs is 
tbe way to fortune. It is tbe untrained, 
unskilled woman wbo falls in competitive 
struggles, as it is "tbe woman witbout fac- 
ulty" wbo is, to quote anotber apt New- 
England pbrase, "tbe sbiftless bouse-keeper " 
and tbe domestic sloven. 

Tbe wood - worker designs and draws a 
pattern of tbe object sbe intends to make, 
and tbe effect of tbis process upon ber mind 
is to enlarge ber grasp of a fact tbat is yet 
to be, and to establisb a correct relation of 
tbings. It is an expression of ber tbougbts 
and an interpreter of ber purposes, for tbe 
drawing takes tbe place of descriptive lan- 
guage, and is far clearer and more erapbatic. 
Since statesmen declare tbat upon woman 
must we depend to reconstruct from tbe 
present cbaotic social conditions sometbing 
wortby of our age, woman berself cannot 
too early ponder bow sbe may so train tbe 
taste, tbe impulses and tbe scientific forces 
of wbicb sbe is possessed as to make berself 
capable of wortby work. By occupying ber- 
self witb broad actualities sbe escapes tlie 
influence of tbat impractical sentimentalism 
wliicb iu tbe past bas destroyed ber bigb- 
est possibilities. Sentimentality is to every- 



193 



day life what superstition and ignorant 
prejudice are to character, \Ybile sentiment 
is like truth, and may be preserved through 
every phase of honorable endeavor. 

It is the nobly developed woman Avho ap- 
plies the beautiful to the useful and makes 
of duty a grace. She is capable of making- 
industry a ijleasure, even though it be of 
necessity remunerative industry. And when 
skilful and conscientious industries come to 
be recognized as a part of woman's higher 
education, her symmetrical and thorough 
training will become a powerful agent to 
advance the interests of the civilized races. 

In the j)ast the different classes of the 
people have voiced their demands for ad- 
vance or change in varying tone and speech, 
now reasonable and just, now unreasonable 
and intolerant ; and the popular cry may 
soon become, "Down Avith idle men and 
women !" Even admitting that the material 
interests of the race do not demand industry, 
the interests of morality and physical well- 
being do, for the person of elegant leisure is 
no longer happy when unoccupied. A cer- 
tain well-known woman, born to a life of 
great luxury, who has never, perhaps, made 
her own toilet unaided, recently conceived 
the idea of providing more comfortable and 

13 



194 



more healthy homes for the mechanics in 
her father's employ ; and she drew the phins 
for the new buildings and personally super- 
intended their erection. Slie was herself a 
skilled mechanic, using a spokeshave at the 
bench in preference to swinging dumb-bells 
in a gymnasium, and explaining this prefer- 
ence by saying that in wielding tools in the 
work - shop she was doing something for 
others as well as benefiting her own health 
and strength. She is personally attended, 
from habit, and because service to her af- 
fords an occupation for a human being for 
whom it is now too late to provide another 
mode of gaining a livelihood. 

The usefulness of linear drawing as a part 
of handicraft is beyond computatiou. The 
masters of this branch of the delineating art 
prove that a pencil brings the mind and the 
eyes into the closest intimacy, and compels 
the hand to become an intelligent agent of 
both. Bacon said, "Education is the culti- 
vation of a just and legitimate familiarity 
betwixt thought and things." This ac- 
quaintance is first established by creating a 
picture of an object in the mind, then repre- 
senting it by a drawing, and lastly produc- 
ing it as a substantial fact. A German 
writer avers that the first and strongest 



105 



reason why ^Yomall is not logical is because 
she does not create solid objects, while an 
American author denies her a talent for bus- 
iness on the ground, as he epigrammatically 
expresses it, that she is incapable of seeing 
all around a thing at once. When her hands 
are trained to produce objects of perfect and 
symujetrical shape, she will have been made 
capable of seeing every side of a thing from 
the beginuiug, and in consequence the prin- 
cipal one of her alleged and doubtless real 
disabilities will have been effaced. 

These are two of many reasons why the 
hands of woman should be trained to the use 
of tools, and to manufacture solid articles of 
utility and beauty. She has been too long 
restrained by silly prejudice from emj^loying 
the chisel, saw, and hammer, and now that 
these implements have lately been placed 
in her hands by University authorities, she 
has at once seized upon them as liberators 
from an enforced inactivity, and from that 
womanish helplessness which, for centuries, 
has received from men both sneers of con- 
tempt and smiles of approval. She has had 
the reputation of being unable even to 
sharpen a pencil i^roperly, and many a wom- 
an has had her temper tried and her patience 
exhausted by waiting for days for a man to 



196 



drive a few niucb-ueedetl uails. Certainly 
only boy or man was once entitled to wield 
that distinguishing instrument, the hammer; 
and yet, curiouslj^ enough, the flimsy excuses 
for postponing its use, even when the occa- 
sion was most urgent, hinted at the con- 
cealed willingness of men to divide the 
honor of handling tools with womankind so 
soon as popular sentiment should justify 
such a departure. Such is the tyranny of 
prejudice. 

It is but a brief time since three young 
Swiss women came by special arrangement 
to this country to make the most delicate 
and expensive grade of files, their accuracy 
and dexterity, it is said, being far superior 
to that of any male file-makers known in 
the craft. It is likely, of course, that work 
demanding endurance and excess of strength 
in bone and sinew will always be performed 
by men, though we cannot tell what vigor 
may in time come to women, since statistics 
have proved that the frames of women who 
are well placed in life are increasing in size, 
csijecially in height, quite beyond those of 
men. In families where all circumstances 
both of inheritance and surroundings are 
equal, nature does not account for this stead- 
ily increasing disproportion. In plants an 



197 



excess of unrtnre and exceptional opportun- 
ities for growth produce beautiful but frail 
leafage and blossom, and so impair the re- 
productive force as to leave the cultivator 
with uncertain chances of succession ; and 
this same condition is to be observed in the 
growth of the human species, for it is by no 
means the overgrown person who is the 
most vigorous and best fitted to endure con- 
tinued strains with impunity. In explana- 
tion of the increasing difference of size be- 
tween men and women, the scientist states 
that boys are set to work while there is still 
time for a wholesome use of their expanding 
energies, while the Hebes and Junos of the 
family are like the over-nurtured hot-house 
plant that grows to abnormal heights. 

Fitting and systematic exercise provided 
by active industrial work is expected to 
remedy this unpleasant disproportion of 
size between the sexes. It will not only 
lighten the burdens hitherto borne by men, 
but it will beautify women and make them 
happier, more companionable, and more en- 
during. Hand training has, and will doubt- 
less long continue to have, many opponents 
among women by whom inherited prejudices 
and weaknesses are cherished along with 
their follies of sentimentality. They con- 



sider themselves beiugs whom men are only 
to happy to support in idleness, and they 
reject all hand-craft, outside of sewing and 
culinary work, as unfeminine and, indeed, 
offensive to their delicate sensibilities. Wom- 
en who have never experienced the pleasure 
to be derived from the use of tools can have 
no conception of the fjiscinatiou it affords, 
to say nothing of its practical value. When 
they have once laid aside their narrow and 
even sinful ideas regarding the delicacy and 
refinement of idleness, they will not willing- 
ly continue in a state of helpless inactivity. 
While it is chivalric in man to permit 
woman to believe that to support her in use- 
lessness is the happiness of his life, still, when 
he makes the acquaintance of an active, 
healthy, wholesome-minded, intellectual, and 
practical woman, he seeks and enjoys her 
society on every occasion. He thinks and 
speaks of an evenly-educated woman — that 
is, she whose hands obey a sensible head — 
as "a comrade," "a sensible woman;" and 
there is no likelihood of other than a worthj'^ 
friendship and a noble comijanionship sub- 
sisting between good men and such women. 
It is the idle and imperfectly educated wom- 
an who most frequently has to regret the 
trickery of unscrupulous and selfish persons, 



and uot she who lias been made self-support- 
ing, and who is perfectly aware that she 
holds the power of self-sustainmeut in her 
finely furnished brain, and her liands, train- 
ed to skilled and definite work. Ordinarily 
manual education among the daughters of 
prosperous parents does not look to estab- 
lishing them in a trade, although the con- 
sciousness that they have been fitted for one 
aftbrds them a permanent feeling of security 
against dependence, should poverty overtake 
them. 

Let us keep in mind that the education 
of the hands, begun in the kindergarten, and 
continued in practical ways, enlarges and 
quickens the mind, and is the most satis- 
factory of mental and physical gymnastics. 
It is more highly beneficial to the bones 
and muscles, by restraining any tendency 
to overgrowth, by producing stability of 
structure and by developing steadiness of 
nerve, than is fencing, riding, or swimming, 
excellent as these exercises are. Of course, 
these exercises aud accomplishments are to 
be desired; but they are beyond many a 
girl's reach, while manual training is not, 
and the dexterity she is able to acquire in 
hand-work will be found of service to her 
entire person if she chooses to make it so. 



If a girl sits awkwardly, stands ungraceful- 
ly, or is badly poised (which is always pro- 
ductive of ungainly attitudes), it is her own 
fault, and within herself lies the remedy. 

Tlie lack of manual dexterity, in a gen- 
eral sense, is the special characteristic of 
savages, and the absence of this skill in 
woman will continue to rank her as the in- 
ferior of man when she should be his com- 
panion and friend, and his equal in practical 
usefulness. Is not he who lays the corner- 
stone equal to the person who completes the 
pinnacle? Though differing in the variety 
of their skill, the two are equal in the pow- 
er and value of their dexterity, judgment, 
and that clear vision that has been trained 
to see the end from the beginning. 

Through the teachings of Tolstoi and 
others we are led to consider that the brains 
in the hands should co-operate with those 
in the head, and we are also brought to rec- 
ognize the fact that the products of both 
are alike good and honorable. There is a 
fme, strong, and ever growing sentiment of 
regard for labor, and a proportionate recog- 
nition of its real and not its speculative 
dignity ; and large-minded men and women 
have concluded that nothing that is worth 
doing can justly be considered beneath ac- 



complislimeut by auy grade of persons; ex- 
pediency and fitness — not birth or fortune 
— determining the choice of pursuits. To 
be sure, this idea may be carried so far as 
to become Utopian, as in some of the practi- 
cal examples furnished by Tolstoi, and even 
by Morris, and their followers. However, it 
is by the light of glaring excesses that judi- 
cious persons see how to choose a safe mid- 
dle way to worthy and valuable results. 

Since Lawrence Oliphant has proven to 
the satisfaction of many conservative minds 
that there is spirit in matter, and scientists 
inform us that there is mind and definite in- 
tention in vegetation, there can be less to 
justify the drawing of a line of distinction 
between hands that ought and hands that 
ought not to perform manual work. This 
expressed belief by respected authorities 
in united mind and matter, will go far 
towards smoothing tlie way for women to 
serve themselves and otliers, in a wider 
range of usefulness in fainily life. Man- 
ual labor finely or even acceptably exe- 
cuted — " art iu craft," as it is now called 
when work is thoroughly well done — re- 
moves from women the formerly prevalent 
objection to her doing what was once called 
menial work. 



As you know, it was Froebel, tlie master- 
mind in kindergarten work for children, 
wlio perceived in manual work — first, a pro- 
tection for cliildren from the evil, and some- 
times fatal, effects of idleness ; and second, 
an aid to brain work in the training of the 
eyes to see more clearly, the ears to hear 
more acutely, and the hands to do accurate 
work. The observing faculties and their 
practical uses to the scholar, whether classi- 
cal or scientific, were then tested, and the 
result both astonished and delighted him. 
He saw, though his countrymen perceived it 
not, that his discovery was the much need- 
ed element in hnman development, both 
mental and physical. He insisted that hand- 
training was boundless in its practical use- 
fulness, establishing in the student the pow- 
er to calculate results. He saw that the 
habit of patient industry, and of conscien- 
tionsly completing every task begun, and an 
enlarged capacity for self -helpfulness and 
for helping others must remove from youth 
many of its strongest temptations. 

Most children are happy in creating or 
repairing domestic implements, and in add- 
ing to the general convenience of the family. 
Here the results of their manual skill are 
apparent from the very beginning, whether 



203 



the implement used be a needle or a saw. 
With, scissors and paper, guided by a j)ur- 
pose definitely pictured in the brain, and 
perhaps transferred to paper by a pencil, 
garment drafting and cutting is practised, 
and it has grown to be one of the accom- 
plishments of the domestic woman. The 
most valuable of family service has been 
the result of elementary work done during 
kindergarten hand-training, not to mention 
as an additional consequence a higher moral 
development and a firmer and larger self- 
respect in households that once had few an- 
ticipations of anything better for themselves 
than bread— just bread for to-day. They 
had no to-morrow, and most of their yester- 
days they were glad to forget, and did, 
whenever the wretchedness of those yester- 
days would let them. Even now, many a 
mother fancies that her child in the kinder- 
garten is only being diverted and safely 
cared for, and she is duly thankful for this. 
But because the little one is given no books 
to study, and is required to commit nothing 
to memory, as a lesson to be recited, she can- 
not understand that its mind is being un- 
folded, enriched, and inspired with an im- 
pulse of perpetual inquiry, that, like the 
pick in the hands of the miner, shall lay 



bare many a treasure of knowledge, and 
bring wisdom and fortune in the days to 
come. 

This permanent effect of kindergarten 
training is but one of several results of an 
apparently insignificant beginning that, with 
other inspirations, has made the minds of 
earnest women alert and eager to do practi- 
cal work with their own hands. They al- 
ready feel the influence of manual training 
upon their sympathies. They understand 
more and more clearly the hardships and 
difficulties of those whom they employ ; for 
they are learning, through a practical sys- 
tem of doing what others do, to realize the 
disabilities, as well as to experience the 
pleasures there are in the differing conditions 
of the human family, the result being that 
they are more willing to aid than to blame, 
more ready to appreciate an endeavor than 
to condemn a failure. 

Hand-training, as taught at Naas, Swedeu, 
includes only instruction in the use of the 
knife, which is held in either hand, accord- 
ing to convenience and the requirements 
of the article made. It is amazing to learn 
the wondrous possibilities of this simple 
implement, for its use not only gives the 
worker great manual dexterity, but also dis- 



205 



cipliiies lier muscles aud enlarges her uuder- 
stauding. 

At tliis school more than a thousand per- 
sons, representing many difltereut social 
grades and many nationalities, have been 
instructed, that they might become teach- 
ers, either as benefactors of their fellows or 
to gain a livelihood. Instruction aud lodg- 
ing are free, each learner being obliged to -paj 
only one Icroner (about twenty -five cents) 
per day for her meals. The meals, of course, 
are never sumptuous, but they are abun- 
dant, wholesome, and cleanly. One hundred 
wood models are provided for the students, 
all representing articles of utility in the 
home or uj>on the farm. 

The basis of the industrial and creative 
principle acquired by Avielding the knife, as 
well as its artistic practical results, are in 
reality an application of the laws of geome- 
try. It goes without saying that this branch 
of instruction is one that women, as a sex, 
have always disliked. It has generally been 
urged that a practical use of this depart- 
ment of mathematics would always remain 
quite outside the demands of an ordinary 
woman's life ; but this has proved a mistake. 
What girls have heretofore learned of geom- 
etry at school was more or less compulsory, 



206 



anil studied witli mental reservations, if not 
with outspoken protests. Manual work, 
however, with its foundation of geometry, 
has proved an agreeable revelation to this 
class of women, who perceive the meaning 
of the science now that it is unveiled to 
them. I remember, when a child, once in- 
quiring of a master in mathematics why, 
when adding figures, one should carry all 
the tens to the next column, and the laconic 
reply was, " Because it is the rule." In 
this way girls have been instructed in ge- 
ometry hy rule, and the ordinary feminine 
mind took no interest in the study and could 
perceive no reason for its being. 

From Moscow we obtain a second and 
more advanced practical system of manual 
training, this system being now used by 
technical and scientific teachers in the best 
schools in America. This fact should be a 
little humiliating to a people who, more than 
any other, lay claim to a national habit of 
whittling. For notwithstanding the good- 
natured ridicule that has been heaped upon 
this American habit, the fact remains that 
many of our most important inventions date 
from an expression in wood of a man's 
thought. But although an endless variety 
of conveniences and labor - saving imple- 



nients, not to mention contrivances that 
have enriched the world, have owed their 
origin to practical skill with the jack-knife, 
this useful tool has only lately been placed 
in the hands of women. Indeed, it was con- 
sidered as inappropriate as a thimble and 
needle would be in the grasp of a boy. It 
was to this sharp division of implements be- 
tween the sexes that the tailor owed an un- 
deserved but universal contempt. Only 
lately a resj^ected New England governor 
announced, in protesting against a narrow- 
ing under-estimate of certain kinds of use- 
fulness, that he highly prized the practical 
knowledge of the needle which he had ac- 
quired when a child. He said that on many 
occasions his sewing had been of the greatest 
use to him, and hundreds of travellers could 
tell a similar tale had they been so fortunate 
as to have had a wise mother. Ruskin calls 
attention to the fact that every one of the 
great Italian painters and sculptors was ap- 
prenticed to workers iu fine metals, and that 
it was while making symmetrical objects 
that their fingers were disciplined and their 
hands made trustworthy aids to their brains, 
in the production of those beautiful master- 
pieces which hav^e won immortal fame. 
According to the Swedish system of hand 



culture at home, there are eight stops or 
class grades, aud each of them involves the 
making of two articles, which mnst he per- 
fected before others are attempted. In this 
way much moral training is gained ; for the 
worker, be she woman or child, is sure to 
lose a part of her force of character when- 
ever she permits herself to leave one task 
uncompleted for the sake of attempting some 
more attractive work. Not only are the 
material and time lost that she has devoted 
to the unfinished article, but her habit of 
persistency is weakened and her power to 
compel herself diminished. Perseverance is 
claimed to be a masculine rather than a 
feminine trait, although the assertion has 
not been satisfactorily proven. If it be true 
in isolated cases, there is an excuse for the 
woman, and perhaps a justification ; for has 
she not a hundred details in her every-day 
duties to others that demand the use of her 
hands and her sympathies? She has also 
many minor but essential industries that 
consume her time, as well as cares that ex- 
haust her strength to such a degree that she 
is unable to systematize her work or choose 
her own hours for those useful and beautiful 
arts which, by-the-bye, if added to the crafts, 
bear profit as well as culture in their train. 



The tools ordinarily used by cabiuet- 
makers are ignored by most persons who are 
seeking merely to acquire manual dexterity 
and have no intention of using their skill as 
a means of livelihood ; but it has been 
proved that hands which are capable of 
turning out well-finished work with a knife 
will find all the less difficulty in mastering 
the use of every sort of carpenter's tools. As 
a rule, a teacher must have made every 
model that is offered the pupils to copy, and 
this instructor is usually a woman. This 
plan at once establishes confidence in the 
mind of the feminine beginner, for she imme- 
diately quotes, for her own encouragement, 
" What woman has done, woman may do." 
The woods in general use are chiefly red and 
white j)ine, though for children's hands bass- 
wood and cedar are preferred, because they 
are softer and do not require as much 
strength to work them properlj'. 

It is an interesting fact that in classes of 
students in hand-training the more thor- 
oughly disciplined minds have an advantage 
over less cultured ones, and in the same pro- 
portion persons with trained hands acquire 
book-learning more easily and remember 
more clearly thau those whose hands are 
untrained in mechanical ways. This has 

11 



210 



been said before, but it cannot be too 
strongly empba.sized while there remains an 
inequality or disproportion between brain 
and manual culture. But the learuer must 
not mistake information upon all sorts of 
subjects for cultivation or mental discipline. 
A knowledge that is confiued to unapplied 
rules and abstract ideas and theories is not 
education in its best sense. The task may 
appear too easy to the inexperienced, but 
the thoroughly trained declare that there is 
true wisdom in making the first formal les- 
son in handicraft, the shaping of a pointer 
or flower-stick, or perhaps a pen-holder, or 
some similar article of simple outline. The 
average person believes herself instinctively 
callable of so mnch industrial art, but let 
her try to make a perfect specimen of one of 
these articles, and she will then understand 
why the simplest object is selected for the 
rudimentary student. Whatever model is 
chosen must be followed with exactness, 
this rule being arbitrary after selection. 
One or a score of the same article may be 
made, but perfection must be attained be- 
fore a second model is allowed the carver. 

The next object presented to the learner 
is a letter-opener, or leaf-cutter, or a netting- 
needle. The third selection is a rolling-pin, 



a towel-roller, or perhaps a roniul ruler, and 
a hoop-stick or clothes-peg. After these are 
completed, handles for bread - kuives are 
carved and their oriiameutatiou reproduced 
from drawings that are either original or 
copied. Then come picture-frames, more or 
less elaborate, bread - boards for the table, 
with an ornamental edge that matches the 
knife, also salad forks aud spoons, and boxes 
with dovetailed corners. The picture-frames 
aud boxes are the first objects that require 
the use of the cabinet-maker's square and 
rule. These implements are used as a test, 
however, and lesseu in no degree the disci- 
pline which the eyes are receiving, the rule 
being introduced to verify rather than guide 
the vision, which has become almost accu- 
rate. As there must be no uncertainty or 
inaccuracj^ in work of this kind, the measure 
is carefnlly applied. The process of produc- 
ing perfect proportions trains the mental 
faculties as well as the hands and muscles, 
and, indeed, the entire body. We may be 
sure that the womau who can make a box, 
dovetail its corners, add its hinges, fit its 
back, and perhaps cover and line it with 
silk, will be able thereafter, with more dex- 
terity and speed, to cut out a gown, adjust 
it perfect]}", hangit gracefully, and complete 



it neatly — yes, aud wear it with greater 
dignity aud elegance. 

Of course, women as well as childreu stand 
at a table or bench while they are working 
at home with a knife. The boards for 
boxes are procured somewhat smoothed, aud 
sawed into proper but uot exact sizes. In 
the college of carpentry for University wom- 
en at Oxford, the beginuing of wood- work- 
ing is also done with a knife, and the same 
simple articles as in Sweden are perfectly 
completed before an advance step is made. 
After that, the bench, with the hammer, saw, 
plane, lathe, spokeshave, brace and bit, 
screw-driver, nails, gimlet, chisel, etc., etc., 
becomes the scene of the student's labors, 
but the strictest discii^line as to progress and 
perception in regard to every object under- 
taken is carefully maintained. All imper- 
fect work is remade or destroyed, since it 
would be an oifence to kee}) it, aud a great- 
er one to give it away. Women who last 
year made carved frames for Christmas gifts 
will this year give carved chairs, brackets, 
sideboard tops, mantels, consoles, picture 
mouldings for a parlor, panels, to take the 
place of hangings, the backs of upright 
pianos, to be turned towards the middle of 
the room. 



The principles of the hand- work, as tauglit 
in Sweden, maintain that all articles made 
ranst be usefnl. But when one's eyes have 
become accustomed to beautiful objects, the 
beautiful has become useful, in that it min- 
isters to our higher senses, and stands in 
relation to our perceptions somewhat as 
perfectly prepared food does to a refined ap- 
petite. It is not gluttony to require well- 
cooked viands, nor is it worldliness to be 
discontented with ugliness of outline, or 
bad proi>orti(ms, in one's furnishings. When 
the defects are unavoidable, the philosophic 
mind accepts them, but it should never be 
satisfied with them. To the many reasons 
— mental, moral, physical, and material — 
adduced in favor of hand-training and man- 
ual dexterit}', may be added the homely fact 
that the wear and tear on feminine temper 
and patience involved in the waiting for 
work to be done will be spared to women, 
and they Avill, by virtue of their self-reliance 
and all -accomplishing energy, bring good 
cheer into the household for husband and 
children. It may certainly be taken for 
granted that the physical gain resulting 
from active mechanical work will diminish 
invalidism, and abrogate laziness. 

An eminent authority on such subjects, a 



214 



man of wide experience, close observation, 
and generous conclusions, declares that 
women, as a rule, waste more nerve force 
and vitality in struggles with tlieir lot and 
in passionate despair over really surmount- 
able difficulties than they would expend in 
an ordinary life of actual labor in such 
mechanical work as comes within the range 
of their strength and tastes. He adds that 
a higher education, wholly acquired by 
study, if it does not entirely destroy a 
woman's potential motherhood, at least di- 
minishes her chances of safety and of a 
healthy posterity. He insists, also, that 
the woman with dexterous hands, besides 
having a more enduring body and a better 
equipped intellect, is not troubled before 
marriage with anxieties regarding her fut- 
ure, since she knows that she is able to 
support herself. 

The present method ( beginning in the 
kindergarten, and doubtless the fruit of the 
Froebelian idea) of educating hands and 
brains, by, through, and for each other, is a 
happy change for girls ; and those wom- 
en who desire a college education need no 
longer be deterred by fears of a broken con- 
stitution, and a morbid fntnre. Whether 
trades should be taught in schools may be 



215 



a question, but that the use of tbe body is 
au impoitaut element in education cannot 
be doubted. Already it is proved that the 
general dexterity which the kindergarten 
methods develop in children opens their 
understanding to the arts, sciences, and 
various branches of philosophy, and gives 
them au interest in practical things and a 
camaraderie with all craftsmen. By this 
kindergarten impulse, also, they are provid- 
ed with occupation at home, a lack of which 
has distracted many a mother, and ruined 
many a child. From the small maker of 
doll's clothes to the artistic costumer, or the 
accomplished needle-woman, there is an in- 
evitable evolution, provided — and this is of 
vital importance — that the mother insists 
upon care and skill in the shaping, and per- 
severance in the comjiletion of every garment 
her little daughter undertakes to make. 
The girl should never be rewarded for good 
work, for the ability to bring her undertak- 
ing to a satisfactory conclusion will be quite 
reward enough. A reward is really a bribe 
under another name, and a child should be 
taught to scorn a reward for well-doing, as 
a dishonorable gain. The kindergarten 
teaches, both by precept and example, that 
neither a girl nor a boy should be paid for 



216 



doing anytliiug ivell. By implication, it 
suggests aucl maintains the difference be- 
tween wages and rewards — one being a just 
recompense, while the other is an offered in- 
dignity. The sound basis of morals which 
the kindergarten constantly and silently 
builds on grows broader and firmer as the 
child develops throngh youth to maturity. 
That self-respect which a woman feels when 
she knows herself capable of meeting all the 
emergencies of her station, has been, in a 
proportionate degree, experienced by the 
girl of tender years, as, little by little, her 
brain was stored with useful knowledge in 
orderly arrangement, and her hands made 
skilful in arts and crafts as interesting as 
pla}^, and yet as dignified as are the pursuits 
of the full-grown man. 



THE END. 



LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 




019 820 966 



